'*     NOV  23 1907      * 


Division       BS24/8 
Section        .  •    T"  7  o 


NATURE, 
THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 


Nature^ 
The  Mirror  of  Grace 


STUDIES  OF 
SEVEN  PARABLES 


ROBERT   ELLIS  THOMPSON,  S.  T.  D. 


"  Know  ye  not  this  parable?  and  how  shall  ye  know  all  the  parables?" 
Mark  iv :  13. 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE  WESTMINSTER   PRESS 

1907 


Copyright,  1907, 

by  the  Trustees  of  the  Presbyterian  Board  of  Publication 

and  Sabbath -School  Work 


Published,  March,  1907 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Light 3 

II.  Life 19 

III.  Sheep  41 

IV.  Food 53 

V.  Touch 69 

VI.  Sowing  and  Reaping  85 

VII.  Upward  iii 


PREFACE 

The  language  used  by  our  Lord  with  regard  to 
his  own  teaching  by  parable  implies  that  there  is 
a  correspondence  between  the  facts  of  nature  and 
those  of  grace,  which  his  people  are  to  find  a  profit 
in  studying.  Such  a  correspondence  is  assumed 
throughout  the  Scriptures  of  both  Testaments. 
It  is  implied  in  the  terms  by  which  spiritual 
truths  are  expressed,  as  these  are  derived  from 
natural  objects  and  transferred  to  the  truths  of  the 
kingdom  of  God. 

We  generally  speak  of  the  parables  as  meaning 
those  which  our  Lord  employed  in  the  Gospels. 
He  uses  this  method  of  teaching  more  directly 
and  frequently  than  is  done  in  any  other  part  of 
the  Bible,  but  not  with  the  assumption  that  he  is 
exhausting  the  analogies  with  which  he  is  dealing. 
Mark  tells  us  that  when  the  disciples  were  puzzled 
by  the  parable  of  the  Sower,  and  asked  its  mean- 
ing, he  said  to  them :  "Unto  you  is  given 
the  mystery  of  the  kingdom  of  God:  but  unto 
them  that  are  without,  all  things  are  done  in  par- 
ables .  .  .  Know  ye  not  this  parable?  and  how 
shall  ye  know  all  the  parables?"  This  seems  to 
say  that  it  is  the  mark  of  his  people  not  to  rest  in 

vii 


NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 


CHAPTER  I 


LIGHT 


"I  am  the  light  of  the  world :  he  that  followeth 
me  shall  not  walk  in  darkness,  but  shall  have  the 
light  of  life."  These  words,  with  which  Thomas 
a  Kempis  begins  his  "Imitation  of  Christ,"  refer 
to  the  moment  in  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  at 
which  the  two  great  candelabra,  unused  at  other 
times,  were  lighted  up  in  the  court  of  the  temple, 
so  that  the  light  they  gave  shone  over  the  whole 
city.  Our  Lord  takes  them  as  a  symbol  of  his 
own  position  as  the  giver  of  spiritual  light  to  man- 
kind. He  says  in  effect :  *T  am  the  light,  not  of 
your  city  only,  or  of  your  nation  alone,  but  of  the 
whole  earth.  He  that  followeth  me,  in  whatever 
corner  of  the  world,  shall  he  not  stumble  as  one 
that  walks  in  the  darkness.  He  shall  have  the 
light  he  needs  to  live  by — the  light  that  gives  life." 

The  parable  is  not  a  new  one.     Light  as  a 


4  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

symbol  of  a  spiritual  blessing  is  recognized  in  all 
the  religions  of  the  world,  especially  that  of 
Persia.  In  the  Old  Testament,  notably  in  Job, 
Isaiah,  and  the  Psalms,  light  is  thus  used.  It  is 
more  spoken  of  in  the  Gospel  of  John  than  in  any 
other  part  of  the  New  Testament,  and  with  one 
exception  (v.  35),  always  as  connected  with  the 
personality  of  our  Lord  and  his  influence  upon 
men.  Both  the  evangelist  and  our  Lord  himself 
find  in  light  the  natural  fact  which  most  resembles 
that  divine  activity,  by  which  he  was  working 
upon  his  own  people  and  upon  the  world  at  large. 

It  was  as  a  symbol  of  this  divine  influence  that 
light  itself  was  created.  It  was  the  firstborn  of 
creation,  for  God  said,  "Let  there  be  light !"  before 
he  called  order  out  of  chaos.  It  was  even  then 
the  visible  symbol  of  that  divine  word  of  God, 
by  whom  "the  world  was  framed,"  of  him  with- 
out whom  "was  not  anything  made  that  hath 
been  made."  The  Fourth  Gospel,  with  that  Genesis 
narrative  kept  in  mind  throughout,  describes  our 
Lord  as  the  spiritual  sun,  sustaining  a  relation  to 
the  spirits  of  men  as  universal  as  that  of  the 
natural  sun  to  the  physical  life  of  our  planet — as 
"the  true  light,  even  the  light  which  lighteth  every 
man,  coming  into  the  world,"  although  too  often 
shining  in  the  darkness  and  not  apprehended. 

Natural  light  is  a  many-sided  fact,  and  it  is 


LIGHT  5 

worth  while  to  study  its  functions  to  see  what  help 
they  give  us  to  understand  the  workings  of  that 
divine  light  which  it  symbolizes. 

I.  The  nature  of  the  natural  light  was  a 
mystery  to  those  who  first  investigated  it.  They 
supposed  it  to  be  a  very  subtle  substance,  poured 
into  our  planet  from  the  sun ;  but  this  we  know  to 
be  impossible.  The  most  refined  material  sub- 
stance, if  hurled  upon  our  planet  at  the  rate  light 
moves — ninety-five  million  miles  in  eight  min- 
utes— would  destroy  it  utterly.  This  more 
material  conception  has  been  replaced  by  the  view 
that  light  is  a  subtle  force,  transmitted  in  waves  of 
an  all-pervading  ether,  and  reaching  every  part  of 
the  universe,  from  the  great  centers  of  light  and 
heat  we  call  suns. 

Our  Lord's  association  of  light  with  life  cor- 
responds to  the  natural  fact.  It  gives  force  and 
vitality  to  vegetable  existence,  and  health  and  joy 
to  animal  existence.  It  circulates  in  every  vein 
and  tingles  in  every  nerve  of  the  animal  world. 
Take  it  away,  and  the  plant  dies ;  the  animal  wilts. 
So  the  nature  of  both  plant  and  animal  craves  the 
light.  There  are,  indeed,  fish  in  the  Mammoth 
Cave  of  Kentucky,  which  never  have  had  a  ray  of 
light  fall  upon  them,  and  their  eyes  have  all  but 
disappeared,  having  been  "atrophied  through 
disuse."      But    they    are   a    poor    kind    of    fish, 


6  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

degenerate  descendants  of  those  which  lived  in  the 
light  of  day.  Those  of  us  who  have  tried  to  live 
and  work  in  rooms,  whose  windows  open  only  to 
the  north,  find  how  needful  the  direct  light  of  the 
sun  is  to  physical  health. 

The  vegetable  world  illustrates  this  craving  of 
life  for  light  in  very  striking  ways.  I  once  went 
into  a  darkened  cellar,  which  the  light  pene- 
trated at  but  one  small  window,  darkened  by  cob- 
webs. At  the  other  end  of  that  cellar  lay  a  few 
potatoes,  which  had  budded  and  sent  out  long 
runners,  some  twenty  feet  in  length  and  ghastly 
white,  toward  that  distant  window.  It  was  as 
pathetic  a  sight  as  the  vegetable  world  could  fur- 
nish, and  a  parable  too  palpable  for  anyone  to 
miss. 

The  spiritual  Light  of  the  world  is  the  subtlest 
and  most  pervasive  of  the  forces  which  act  upon 
humanity.  Like  the  light  of  day,  he  moves 
through  men's  lives  silently,  swiftly,  with  no 
blare  of  trumpets  or  prancing  of  processions,  but 
as  gently  as  the  dew  falls  upon  the  grass,  or  the 
sunlight  shines  into  the  opening  flowers.  He 
does  not  cry  aloud  In  the  world's  market  places, 
nor  is  he  heralded  In  Its  newspapers ;  but  he  passes 
to  and  fro,  in  ceaseless  and  unmeasured  energy 
among  the  hearts  of  men.  His  knock  at  the  door 
is  as  quiet  as  the  sunshine  which  awakens  them 


LIGHT  7 

every  day  from  sleep;  but  if  any  man  open  unto 
him,  there  he  dwells  in  lasting  and  life-giving  in- 
fluence, making  his  home. 

Our  natures  were  made  for  this  Light,  and  they 
crave  it  as  pathetically  as  those  potatoes  craved 
for  the  light  of  day.  As  Tertullian  says,  "The 
soul  is  naturally  Christian,"  for  we  were  made  for 
him,  and  can  have  no  lasting  satisfaction  apart 
from  him.  But  we  are  not  bound  to  him  by  the 
compulsion  of  natural  law,  for  we  have  the  fatal 
power  to  choke  and  deny  our  craving  for  him. 
"They  will  not  come  unto  me  that  they  may  have 
light,"  he  himself  said  of  his  own  countrymen. 
He  can  be  no  more  to  us  than  we  choose  to  have 
him  be.  He  knocks  at  the  door,  but  it  is  ours  to 
open.  If  we  refuse  to  open  it,  we  are  shutting 
out  the  health  of  our  spirits ;  for  the  holiness  he 
brings  is  the  health  of  the  heart.  It  is  walking  in 
the  light,  and  living  the  true  life  in  the  true  way. 

11.  Light  is  the  parent  of  color,  and  color  is 
the  natural  symbol  of  joy.  We  have  come  to 
know  what  color  is  through  the  study  of  light.  We 
now  know  that  nothing  has  color  in  itself,  but  only 
through  the  fitness  of  its  surface  to  absorb  some  of 
the  rays  of  which  light  is  composed,  and  to  re- 
flect the  rest.  "All  cats  are  black  in  the  dark,"  it 
has  been  said.  So  are  all  flowers;  so  are  all 
people.     It  is  only  under  the  light  that  differences ' 


8  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

in  color  exist.  What  would  have  been  a  dull, 
colorless,  and  cheerless  world,  is  arrayed  by  light 
in  all  the  colors  of  the  spectrum. 

So  in  the  human  world,  joy  is  the  child  of  the 
light.  Counterfeits  of  joy  there  may  be  without 
it — amusements,  diversions,  pastimes,  and  dis- 
tractions. But,  as  each  of  these  words  confesses 
by  its  first  and  strict  sense,  these  are  but  devices 
to  kill  time,  and  to  keep  us  from  thinking  with  the 
gravity  and  sincerity  which  befit  human  beings. 
It  is  impossible  that  they  should  fill  our  hearts  or 
satisfy  our  inborn  craving  for  joy.  We  are  so 
made  that  the  whole  world,  apart  from  God,  is 
not  enough  for  us.  That  is  our  glory  and  our 
pain.  That  is  the  hunger  which  devoured  the 
heart  of  the  prodigal  in  the  far-off  land  of  riot 
and  waste. 

God  means  joy  for  us.  He  does  not  mean  us 
to  accept  what  George  Macdonald  calls  "the  gray 
look  of  life"  as  the  true  one.  It  is  not  for  a  col- 
orless and  cheerless  existence,  even  of  duty,  that 
he  has  made  us,  but  for  gladness  and  happiness. 
So  his  Son  is  the  joy-bringer.  He  established  a 
kingdom,  which  is  not  only  "righteousness  and 
peace,"  but  "joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  The  truth 
of  this  is  seen  in  the  lives  of  the  first  Christians, 
who  had  very  little  of  what  the  world  calls  wealth, 
who  stood  daily  in  peril  of  their  lives;  who  were 


LIGHT  9 

despised  by  their  fellow-men  as  little  better  than 
mad.  There  is  no  body  of  literature  in  the  world 
that  is  pervaded  by  such  an  uplift  of  a  great  joy 
as  is  the  New  Testament.  They  abounded  in 
joy,  and  even  "took  joyfully  the  spoiling  of  their 
goods." 

III.  Photography  shows  that  there  are  rays  of 
color  in  the  spectrum  both  above  and  below  those 
which  our  eyes  can  distinguish.  In  some,  the 
vibration  of  the  waves  of  the  ether  is  too  rapid  for 
our  eyes  to  follow;  in  others  too  slow.  If  our 
eyes  had  a  wider  range,  we  should  discover  in  the 
natural  world  a  wealth  of  color,  as  real  as  our 
reds,  blues,  and  greens,  in  addition  to  that  which 
we  now  see.  When  we  get  better  eyes  than  we 
now  have,  we  will  see  them. 

So  in  the  spiritual  world,  we  are  told,  there 
are  heights  and  depths  of  joy  of  which  we  in  this 
life  can  know  nothing.  We  cannot  even  imagine 
them,  the  apostle  says  after  having  had  a  glimpse 
of  them  (I  Cor.  ii:9).  But  as  the  color  we  see 
suggests  and  makes  credible  to  us  the  color  which 
is  beyond  our  seeing,  so  the  joy  we  already  have 
makes  it  possible  for  us  to  believe  in  a  gladness  and 
a  delight  beyond  our  experience,  and  we  come  to 
look  for  a  rapture  of  peace  and  contentment  bet- 
ter than  earth  has  at  its  best.  "Enter  thou  into 
the  joy   of    thy    Lord,"    are   the    words   which 


lo  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

welcome  faithful  servants  into  the  life  beyond 
death.  What  that  joy  is  we  are  able  to  guess  from 
the  language  of  our  Lord,  when  he  speaks  of  "joy 
in  the  presence  of  the  angels  of  God  over  one 
sinner  that  repenteth."  It  is  the  joy  of  lifting  up 
the  fallen,  comforting  the  sorrowful,  welcoming 
the  lost — the  rapture  which  lights  up  heaven  with 
a  fresh  gladness  to  its  uttermost  bounds,  when  the 
Father  welcomes  back  a  lost  son.  In  that  great 
fellowship  of  joy  and  service,  the  boundless  yearn- 
ings, and  the  unsatisfied  capacities  of  our  human 
nature,  will  find  their  fit  satisfaction — 

"New  senses,  new  rewards  of  sense, 
The  spectrum  filled,  all   dark  lines   bright." 

IV.  It  is  through  light  that  we  learn  the  real 
magnitude  of  all  things  in  our  natural  life.  We 
are  dependent  upon  sight  for  our  sense  of  size 
and  distance.  The  baby  grasps  at  the  plaything 
either  too  far  or  too  near  to  catch  it,  until  he 
learns  to  measure  distances  by  focusing  his  eyes. 
If  we  waken  in  a  dark  room  and  try  to  find  the 
door,  especially  if  the  room  and  its  contents  be 
not  familiar  to  us,  we  seem  to  go  miles  in  search 
of  it.  It  is  through  light  that  we  perceive  the 
bulk  of  things. 

It  is  in  the  Light  which  Jesus  Christ  is  and  im- 
parts that  we  learn  the  true  magnitudes  of  life, 


LIGHT  II 

and  discover  the  smallness  of  the  small  and  the 
greatness  of  the  great.  Very  much  of  our  Lord's 
own  teaching  is  directed  to  this  difference.  He 
labors  to  bring  his  hearers  to  discern  what  is  great 
enough  to  be  worthy  of  their  attention,  and  what 
is  small  enough  to  be  a  negligible  quantity.  This, 
for  instance,  is  his  leading  purpose  in  the  para- 
bles of  the  precious  pearl,  and  of  the  treasure  hid 
in  the  field.  He  applauds  the  business  man's  sense 
of  what  is  best  worth  having,  and  his  acting 
promptly  and  without  reserve  on  ascertained 
values.  On  the  other  hand,  he  warns  us  all 
against  the  mistake  of  assuming  that  the  best 
worth  our  having  is  what  the  world  counts  as 
such,  and  rebukes  men  for  taking  the  measures  of 
the  market  place  for  those  which  really  test  suc- 
cess in  life.  Not  the  honor  of  men,  but  the  ap- 
proval of  God;  not  the  meat  and  clothing  which 
cherish  material  life,  but  life  itself,  which  is  more 
than  a  living;  not  the  "much  goods  laid  up  in 
store,"  but  the  riches  a  man  can  carry  beyond 
death,  he  insists  are  worthy  of  our  aroused  atten- 
tion. "True  religion,"  says  Jonathan  Edwards, 
"is  nothing  but  to  know  small  things  to  be  small, 
and  great  things  to  be  great,  and  to  act  on  that 
knowledge." 

V.  The    natural    light    not    only    moves    on 
straight  lines,  but  is  reflected  and  refracted  into 


12  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Spaces  it  would  not  reach  directly.  If  it  were  not, 
there  would  be  entire  darkness  wherever  the  rays 
of  the  sun  did  not  fall.  The  electric  light  has 
very  Httle  power  of  refraction,  so  the  shadows  it 
casts  are  very  deep,  and  it  is  necessary  to  clear 
away  the  branches  of  the  trees  on  streets  lighted 
by  it,  where  these  come  in  its  way.  The  sunlight 
shines  around  corners  and  into  rooms  whose 
windows  face  only  to  the  north,  though  not  so 
clearly  or  healthily,  as  I  found  from  using  a  room 
of  that  aspect   for  a  library. 

The  spiritual  rays  of  the  Light  of  the  world  are 
reflected  and  refracted  in  much  the  same  way,  to 
the  spirits  of  those  who  turn  their  mental  windows 
away  from  him,  but  who  are  living  in  a  Christian 
community,  where  his  presence  and  his  influences 
are  welcomed  by  others.  It  is  sometimes  ob- 
jected that  the  Christian  virtues  cannot  be  de- 
pendent upon  faith  in  our  Lord,  since  such  people 
as  John  Stuart  Mill  and  Francis  Power  Cobbe  ex- 
emplified many  of  those  virtues  while  rejecting 
his  claim  to  be  the  Light  of  the  world.  Let  us 
not  forget  that  they  lived  in  a  society  pervaded  by 
the  influences  of  the  Christian  gospel,  and  in  in- 
timate relations  with  those  who  cherish  those  lofty 
ideals  of  character  which  are  realized  in  the  per- 
son of  our  Lord.  It  would  have  been  otherwise  if 
they  had  lived  in  a  community  which  shared  their 


LIGHT  13 

denials;*  and  they  would  have  been  better  and 
happier  if  they  had  lived  ''by  faith  upon  the  vSon  of 
God."  They  lost  much  and  gained  nothing  by 
having  the  windows  of  the  mind  turned  to  the 
cold  north  of  unbelief,  and  by  being  dependent 
upon  others  to  reflect  to  them  that  which  they 
should  have  received  directly  from  the  Son  of 
man. 

VI.  In  the  natural  world,  as  we  see  it  on  the 
surface  of  our  planet,  light  and  darkness  appear 
to  balance  each  other.  We  get  more  light  in 
summer,  and  more  darkness  in  winter,  but  taking 
the  round  year  they  seem  to  be  equal.  But  this 
is  a  delusion,  due  to  our  being  badly  placed  for  a 
true  observation  of  the  matter.     On  the  earth's 


*  "When  the  microscopic  search  of  skepticism,  which  has 
hunted  the  heavens  and  sounded  the  seas  to  disprove  the 
existence  of  a  Creator,  has  turned  its  attention  to  human 
society,  and  has  found  a  place  on  this  planet  ten  miles 
square  where  a  decent  man  can  live  in  decency,  comfort, 
and  security,  supporting  and  educating  his  children  un- 
spoiled and  unpolluted;  a  place  where  age  is  reverenced, 
infancy  protected,  manhood  respected,  womanhood  hon- 
ored, and  human  life  held  in  due  regard — when  skeptics 
can  find  such  a  place  ten  miles  square  on  this  globe,  where 
the  gospel  of  Christ  has  not  gone  and  cleared  the  way, 
and  laid  the  foundations  and  made  decency  and  security 
possible,  it  will  be  in  order  for  the  skeptical  literati  to 
move  thither  and  then  ventilate  their  views." — James  Rus- 
sell Lowell. 


14  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

surface  the  darkness  seems  to  equal  the  Hght,  and 
yet  it  is  but  the  shadow  of  our  planet,  which  di- 
minishes and  dwindles  as  it  passes  out  from  the 
sun  until  it  vanishes,  and  the  light  passes  beyond 
it  to  meet  the  light  of  other  suns.  Jakob  Boehme 
says  that  the  planets,  as  God  made  them  at  the 
first,  cast  no  shadow,  and  darkness  was  not. 
The  shadow,  he  says,  came  with  sin,  and  is  part 
of  the  anguish  from  which  creation  is  to  be  re- 
deemed. 

We  are  equally  liable  to  be  misled  in  our  judg- 
ment of  the  relative  extent  of  spiritual  light  and 
darkness.  In  our  less  hopeful  moods  we  are  dis- 
posed to  think  that  moral  evil  exceeds  goodness 
in  our  world's  life,  and  sin  is  more  abundant  than 
the  grace  which  is  fighting  against  it.  We  even 
incline  to  think  it  always  must  be  so  in  this  world 
of  ours.  Here  also  we  need  to  be  lifted  above  our 
common  level,  to  get  the  right  position  for  a  judg- 
ment. That  position  is  by  the  riven  tomb  of  the 
risen  Saviour.  His  rising  again  from  the  dead 
is  the  symbol,  and  more  than  the  symbol,  of  his 
triumph  over  the  powers  of  spiritual  darkness.  It 
is  the  proclamation  that  life  is  mightier  than  death, 
good  than  evil,  grace  than  sin.  It  is  the  earnest 
and  the  prophecy  of  the  final  and  substantial  vic- 
tory of  the  kingdom  of  light  over  all  antagonistic 
influences.     Without  it,  hope  would  have  to  be 


LIGHT  15 

struck  from  the  list  of  the  Christian  virtues,  as 
having  no  basis  in  truth  and  reality,  and  as  being 
but  a  make-believe. 

In  our  age,  Christian  hope  has  arrayed  against 
it  the  pessimism  which  is  almost  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  of  the  time,  and  which  seduces  us  into 
an  unchristian  estimate  of  the  worth  of  human 
life  and  its  outlook  on  the  future.  It  proclaims 
that  man  is  a  contemptible  creature,  governed 
only  by  the  lowest  motives,  and  perennially  ca- 
pable of  lawless  crime,  as  well  as  of  selfish  cow- 
ardice. It  echoes  Satan's  estimate  of  us,  "All  that 
a  man  hath  he  will  give  for  his  life" — a  lie  which 
is  contradicted  on  every  page  of  human  history. 
To  escape  this  insidious  anti-gospel,  we  must  re- 
member how  poorly  placed  we  are  for  a  true  esti- 
mate of  the  spiritual  facts,  and  how  much  more 
readily  we  come  into  knowledge  of  the  evil  in  life 
than  of  its  good.  We  must  have  faith,  in  spite  of 
any  appearances  to  the  contrary,  that  the  good 
cause  is  forever  advancing,  that  grace  is  always 
gaining  ground  upon  sin  and  will  "yet  more 
abound,"  and  that  the  light  is  vaster  and  mightier 
than  the  darkness.  For  that  is  involved  in  our 
faith  in  our  Lord  and  Master,  the  Light  of  the 
world,  the  conquering  King,  who  is  subjecting 
all  things  to  himself. 


II 

LIFE 


CHAPTER  II 

LIFE 

The  things  which  we  are  most  familiar  with 
and  which  lie  the  nearest  to  us,  are  generally  those 
we  find  the  hardest  to  define ;  that  is,  to  state  the 
class  they  belong  to,  and  how  they  differ  from 
other  things  of  that  class.  What,  for  instance, 
is  life  ?  We  look  to  science  for  an  answer,  and  we 
get  no  better  than  a  relative  definitiop.  We  are 
told  that  life  is  sensitiveness  to  environment.  The 
dead  body  has  lost  that  sensitiveness.  The  sun 
shines  on  it  without  heating  it.  The  cold  wind 
blows  upon  it  without  adding  to  its  chill.  No 
strange  sound  avails  to  awaken  it  to  attention.  It 
is  irresponsive  to  all  that  is  round  it;  and  this  is 
death,  as  its  power  to  respond  was  life. 

Although  the  definition  is  superficial,  it  is  not 
worthless.  It  answers,  after  a  fashion,  to  some  of 
the  uses  of  the  word  in  the  Scriptures,  where  life 
is  spoken  of  relatively.  We  are  made  "alive 
unto  God  in  Jesus  Christ,"  when  the  Son  makes 
the  Father  more  real  to  us,  so  that  this  greatest 
of  all  the  facts  in  our  environment  enters  into  our 
experience,  and  ceases  to  be  a  notion  of  the  mind. 

'  19 


20  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Natural  life  having  so  much  that  is  mysterious 
about  it,  we  may  expect  spiritual  life  to  be  a  mys- 
tery. But  the  one  mystery  casts  light  upon  the 
other,  especially  through  their  resemblances. 

I.  Prof.  Drummond  emphasizes  the  fact  that 
life  is  derivable  only  from  life.  The  spontaneous 
generation  of  a  living  being  from  dead  matter  is 
unknown  to  science,  although  some  have  believed 
it  possible,  and  a  very  few  have  claimed  that  they 
witnessed  it.  In  all  such  cases  we  have  reason  to 
believe  that  the  difficult  task  of  eliminating  living 
germs  from  the  substances  in  which  the  experi- 
ment was  made  was  not  complete.  In  the  latest  of 
them,  the  evidences  that  life  resulted  are  too  faint 
and  feeble  for  even  a  materialist  to  pin  his  faith 
to,  however  anxious  he  might  be  to  believe  this. 
That  this  spontaneous  and  natural  transition  from 
dead  matter  to  the  living  organism,  without  the 
intervention  of  any  living  agency,  creative  or  gen- 
erative, is  necessary  to  complete  the  materialist 
theory  of  the  world  as  it  stands,  is  warrant  enough 
for  us  to  exact  the  most  decisive  proofs  from  those 
who  tell  us  they  have  observed  such  a  transition.* 

*  Professor  Tyndall,  in  his  Belfast  Address  (1874),  de- 
clared that  matter  possessed  the  promise  and  the  potency 
of  all  forms  of  existence.  But  he  rejected  every  alleged 
instance  of  spontaneous  generation  of  life,  as  do  almost 
all  the  thinkers  of  his  school.  Haeckel  is  the  notable 
exception. 


LIFE  21 

The  transition  from  the  dead  to  the  living,  from 
the  inorganic  to  the  organic  world,  cannot  be 
traced  to  any  operation  of  dead  forces.  It  must 
have  had  its  commencement  in  a  creative  act, 
v^hich  made  a  new  beginning.  The  existence  of 
life  in  even  its  humblest  forms  implies  a  living 
Creator,  shaping  his  works  in  an  increasing  like- 
ness to  himself.  Life  is  a  perpetual  challenge  to 
the  materialist,  for  the  forces  his  theory  recog- 
nizes and  implies  would  have  left  the  world  with 
no  higher  organization  than  the  rock  crystal. 

A  still  more  direct  challenge  is  found  in  the 
presence  of  moral  life  in  the  human  species,  with 
its  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  of  duty  and  of  sin. 
As  Professor  Huxley  said  in  his  "Romanes  Lec- 
ture on  Evolution  and  Ethics"  (1893),  nature 
knows  nothing  of  right  and  wrong,  and  has  no 
place  for  ethical  distinctions.  Their  origin  must 
be  sought  elsewhere.  That  they  are  real,  implies 
the  activity  of  a  creative  will,  which  has  raised 
our  race  to  an  honor  above  the  beasts,  and  has 
clothed  us  with  a  dignity  and  a  responsibility 
which  are  supernatural.  In  making  this  conces- 
sion, the  author  of  "Man's  Place  in  Nature" 
(1863),  admitted  that  man  has  a  place  above  na- 
ture, of  which  natural  science  can  give  us  no  ac- 
count. 

II.  This  is  as  true  of  the  restoration  of  life  as 


22  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

of  its  inception.  That  the  race  of  men  came  down 
from  the  first  level  of  their  created  dignity  by  a 
fall  or  apostasy,  which  has  implanted  what  Kant 
calls  ''a  radical  evil  in  human  nature,"  is  the  teach- 
ing both  of  the  Bible  and  of  manifold  Gentile  tra- 
ditions. It  is  pecuHar  to  the  Bible  that  it  shows 
that  God  did  not  consent  that  this  fall  should  be 
the  law  of  human  life,  but  undertook  to  retrieve 
it  by  renewing  the  spiritual  life  of  mankind. 
Here  again  there  was  a  new  beginning,  through 
the  birth  of  a  divine  life  into  the  world  in  the  in- 
carnation of  the  Son  of  God.  Our  divine  Lord  is 
a  new  vital  force  added  to  the  spiritual  resources 
of  the  world.  We  cannot  resolve  this  force  into 
any  felicitous  combination  of  elements  already 
existing  in  human  history.  Skeptical  historians 
and  critics  have  attempted  again  and  again  to 
show  that  nothing  radically  different  from  the 
previous  course  of  affairs  took  place  in  Palestine 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  Era,  that  Jesus 
was  a  happy  blending  of  Hebraic  and  Hellenic 
elements  into  a  novel  combination,  that  the  facts 
as  to  his  life  and  his  acts  have  been  obscured  by 
wondering  disciples,  and  so  forth.  After  all  these 
efforts,  he  stands  out  against  the  background  of 
the  world's  history  as  a  unique  and  original  spirit- 
ual fact,  a  "new  thing"  which  was  added  to  the 
spiritual  forces  of  the  world  at  the  opening  of  that 


LIFE  23 

era  from  which  the  greatest  peoples  count  their 
years.  If  the  whole  New  Testament  were  annihi- 
lated, or  had  never  been  written,  the  reach  and  the 
scope  of  the  influence  he  exerted  upon  men  of  his 
own  age  and  of  every  age  since  his  ascension, 
would  present  to  the  unbelieving  critic  just  the 
same  puzzle  as  they  now  have  to  solve.  It  is 
through  the  existence  of  the  apostolic  records  that 
we  and  they  are  furnished  with  the  only  key  to 
that  puzzle.  They  tell  us  that  the  new  life  that 
dawned  upon  the  world  came  from  the  life  of  the 
Son  of  God,  who  came  that  we  "may  have  life, 
and  may  have  it  abundantly." 

Parallel  with  the  redemption  of  the  race  is  the 
regeneration  of  the  individual.  The  deadness  and 
insensitiveness  to  spiritual  facts  which  sin  has 
produced  in  us  not  only  has  no  remedy  in  nature, 
but  is  itself  of  the  nature  of  a  "law  of  sin  and 
death,"  by  which  we  are  sunk  farther  and  farther 
in  evil  through  the  evil  already  admitted  into  our 
wills.  It  is  a  law  of  reaping  as  we  have  sowed, 
by  which  ever-increasing  harvests  of  wrong  are 
gathered  in  our  experience.  Science,  philosophy, 
and  the  world  offer  us  no  remedy  for  this.  They 
speak  only  of  the  certainty  that  every  cause  will 
work  on  to  its  natural  effects,  and  every  reaping 
must  be  after  the  fashion  of  the  sowing.  They 
may  bring  us  alleviations,  but  no  cure.     Apart 


24  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

from  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  there  is  not  the 
smallest  reason  for  us  to  expect  that  any  bad 
man  will  ever  become  a  good  one,  or  that  the 
canker  of  sin  will  ever  cease  to  gnaw  into  the  life 
it  has  once  attacked.  Nothing  less  than  the  im- 
partation  of  a  new  life  will  suffice  to  stop  the  pro- 
cesses of  spiritual  destruction  already  begun  in 
us,  and  to  make  us  so  alive  unto  God  that  we  shall 
live  in  holy  obedience  to  his  laws,  and  in  the  en- 
jo3mient  of  his  peace.  For  the  individual  man  as 
for  the  race,  it  is  life  from  life. 

III.  Life  is  the  great  unifier.  It  builds 
up  its  organisms  by  gathering  into  one 
the  lifeless  particles  of  inorganic  matter,  and 
shaping  these  into  tissues  and  organs  which  no 
skill  of  human  manipulation  can  reproduce. 
Whether  in  vegetable  or  animal  form,  it  effects 
combinations  which  cannot  be  repeated  by  the 
most  skillful  mechanisms  or  chemical  manipula- 
tions. We  recognize  its  products  as  standing 
apart  from  all  that  are  not  the  result  of  the  play 
of  vital  force,  and  as  constituting  unities  of  a 
higher  order  than  either  physics  or  chemistry  can 
furnish. 

Henry  Brooke,  in  his  curious  book,  "The  Fool 
of  Quality"  (1760-1777),  has  an  admirable  state- 
ment of  this  truth  : — 

"Every  particle  of  matter  has  a  self,  or  distinct 


LIFE  25 

entity,  inasmuch  as  it  cannot  be  any  other  particle 
of  matter.  Now  while  it  continues  in  this  state  of 
selfishness,  or  absolute  distinction,  it  is  utterly 
useless  and  insignificant,  and  is  to  the  universe  as 
though  it  were  not.  But  w^ien  the  divine  In- 
telligence hath  harmonized  certain  qualities  of 
such  distinct  particles  into  certain  animal  or  vege- 
table systems,  each  yields  up  its  powers  for  the 
benefit  of  the  whole,  and  then  and  then  only  be- 
comes capable  and  productive  of  shape,  coloring, 
beauty — flowers,  fragrance,  and  fruits.  This 
operation  in  matter  is  no  other  than  a  manifesta- 
tion of  a  like  process  in  mind;  and  no  soul  ever 
was  capable  of  any  degree  of  virtue  or  happiness 
save  so  far  as  it  was  drawn  away  in  its  affections 
from  self ;  save  so  far  as  it  is  engaged  in  wishing, 
contriving,  endeavoring,  promoting,  and  rejoic- 
ing in  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  others." 

So  long  as  man  stands  aloof  in  the  isolation  of 
a  spiritual  atom,  with  his  thoughts  all  centering 
in  himself,  under  the  influence  either  of  his  selfish 
propensities,  or  his  more  selfish  pharisaic  pride, 
he  is  spiritually  dead.  When  he  is  got  off  his 
own  center,  is  brought  under  the  influence  of  a 
life  that  lies  beyond  himself,  and  finds  a  center 
which  is  not  in  himself,  he  comes  to  life,  and 
through  that  life  is  bound  to  his  fellowmen. 

Our  Lord  did  not  come  into  the  world  merely 


26  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

to  save  individual  sinners  from  their  sins,  and  to 
fit  them  for  heaven.  He  came  to  set  up  a  king- 
dom or  order  of  human  Hfe  under  an  unseen 
King,  in  which  men  should  live  in  more  natural 
and  human  relations  with  each  other  than  ever 
before.  This  kingdom  finds  its  highest  expres- 
sion in  his  church,  but  it  embraces  the  family 
and  the  nation  in  its  scope,  as  institutions  divinely 
established  for  the  welfare  of  mankind.  It  brings 
to  these  the  "life  that  working  strongly  binds" 
man  to  man  more  closely  than  ever  before. 

(a)  He  has  made  the  family  a  new  thing 
within  the  sphere  of  his  influence,  abolishing 
polygamy,  lifting  the  wife  to  her  rightful  place 
of  honor,  purifying  the  affections  and  refining  the 
manners  of  all  Christian  households.  He  has 
turned  the  hearts  of  the  fathers  to  the  children 
and  of  the  children  to  the  fathers,  emancipating 
the  child  from  the  virtual  slavery  of  the  old  order 
and  securing  him  the  rights  of  a  human  being. 

(b)  His  influence  upon  the  life  of  the  Christian 
state  has  been  less  fully  recognized,  as  being  less 
palpable,  though  not  less  real.  Outside  of 
Christendom  there  is  little  sense  of  the  brother- 
hood which  binds  a  nation  in  one,  so  that  all  the 
members  suffer  when  one  is  wronged  or  prostrated 
by  disaster.  Mr.  J.  Talboys  Wheeler,  in  his 
"Short  History  of  India"  (1880),  describing  the 


LIFE  27 

apathy  with  which  the  natives  regarded  the  hor- 
rors of  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  (1756),  re- 
marks :  'This  utter  want  of  political  ties  among 
the  masses  of  India  is  the  cause  of  their  depres- 
sion. Individually,  they  are  the  kindest  and  most 
compassionate  people  in  the  world,  but  outside 
their  own  little  circle  of  family  or  caste  they  are 
utterly  heedless  of  what  is  going  on.  Within  the 
last  few  years  there  has  been  a  change  for  the  bet- 
ter; the  famines  have  enlarged  their  sympathies, 
and  the  political  future  of  the  Hindu  people  is 
more  hopeful  now  than  at  any  former  period  of 
their  history."  It  has  been  through  two  hundred 
years  of  contact  with  Christian  ideas  that  they 
have  changed  for  the  better,  and  have  begun  to 
realize  that  they  have  a  share  in  the  sufferings 
of  their  countrymen. 

So  the  awakening  of  China  to  this  sense  has 
found  expression  in  a  general  refusal  to  have  any 
dealings  with  our  own  country,  because  of  the  in- 
dignities to  which  their  countrymen  have  been 
subjected  in  visiting  America.  The  leaders  in  this 
movement  are  those  who  have  imbibed  Christian 
ideas  on  the  subject  through  an  education  in  west- 
ern science  and  literature,  and  who  have  become 
editors  of  the  popular  newspapers  of  the  coun- 
try. They  are  bringing  the  hundreds  of  millions 
of  Chinamen  to  feel  that  they  are  wronged  in 


28  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

every  wrong  inflicted  upon  a  countryman  of 
theirs,  as  they  are  one  body  poHtic. 

It  is  especially  in  Christian  nations  that  this 
feeling  has  the  largest  scope  and  finds  the  fullest 
expression.  Through  it  a  new  stage  of  political 
development  has  been  reached,  in  which  the  whole 
strength  and  power  of  the  state  is  brought  to  bear 
in  defense  of  the  rights  of  the  humblest  citizen. 
The  Christian  state  has  become  the  organized 
unselfishness  of  the  whole  people  for  the  protec- 
tion of  every  member  of  the  body  politic.  Nor 
does  it  stop  with  the  assertion  and  maintenance  of 
rights.  As  Mazzini  well  says,  nations  do  not  ex- 
ist by  the  maintenance  of  rights  merely,  but 
through  heroism,  and  through  self-sacrifice.  It 
is  through  their  citizens  being  willing  to  "go  the 
second  mile"  that  they  maintain  their  existence 
and  their  authority.  Their  history  is  the  story 
of  great  deeds  done  for  the  common  weal,  where 
mere  rights  were  not  at  stake. 

(c)  In  what  might  be  called  the  biological  pas- 
sages of  his  epistles  (Romans  xii:4-9;  I  Corin- 
thians xii:  12-30;  Ephesians  iii:6;  iv:4-i6; 
Colossians  i:  17-24;  ii:  18,  19;  iii:  15),  the  apostle 
Paul  applies  this  principle  to  the  church,  and  illus- 
trates the  nature  of  our  fellowship  with  our  Head 
and  with  each  other  from  comparison  with  the 
human    body.       It    is    his    favorite    form    of 


LIFE  29 

declaring  that  our  Lord  came  to  establish  a  king- 
dom among  men,  and  he  anticipates  modern 
sociologists  in  the  use  of  this  analogy  to  explain 
the  social  unities  and  functions.  "We,  who  are 
many,  are  one  body  in  Christ,  and  severally  mem- 
bers one  of  another." 

IV.  Growth  is  a  characteristic  of  life.  Dead 
things  never  grow.  They  may  enlarge  by  the  ac- 
cretion of  dead  particles,  as  do  the  stalactites  in  a 
lime  cave;  but  these  particles  have  no  organic 
unity,  so  that  none  of  them  renders  any  service  to 
the  whole,  or  fills  any  place  which  the  rest  could 
not.  A  tree  adds  to  its  bulk  year  by  year,  by  add- 
ing each  year  a  fresh  layer  of  woody  fiber  to  its 
trunk,  and  by  extending  its  old  branches  and  put- 
ting forth  new.  These  additions  are  parts  of  its 
organism,  and  sharers  of  its  fortunes  as  an  or- 
ganism. With  its  decay,  they  would  show  a 
diminished  vitality,  and  with  its  death  they  would 
die.  It  is  only  the  living  tree  that  goes  on  adding 
to  its  bulk. 

So  in  the  spiritual  life :  its  reality  is  shown  by 
its  growth.  In  a  memorable  passage  of  his 
"Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua"  (1864),  the  late  Cardi- 
nal Newman  says:  "The  writer  to  whom 
(humanly  speaking)  I  owe  my  soul  was  Thomas 
Scott  of  Aston-Sandford ...  I  used  almost  as 
proverbs  what  I  considered  the  scope  and  issue  of 


30  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

his  doctrine,  'Holiness  before  peace/  and 
'Growth,  the  only  evidence  of  life.'  "  The  dis- 
position in  Thomas  Scott's  time  was  to  rest  the 
proof  of  the  possession  of  the  Christian  life  upon 
a  single  experience,  called  "a.  hopeful  work  of 
grace."  He  justly  insisted  that  this  can  be  no  more 
than  the  first  step  in  Christian  living,  and  that 
"growth  in  grace"  is  the  demand  of  the  gospel, 
equally  with  repentance  unto  life,  and  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  God.  Dr.  Trumbull  tells  of 
hearing  a  man  say,  "All  my  class  is  converted 
now,  and  I  look  upon  my  work  as  done."  It  had 
but  begun,  for  the  training  of  those  young  Chris- 
tians all  lay  before  him.  So  we  see  now,  for  we 
all  agree  with  Thomas  Scott,  that  real  life  will 
find  its  expression  in  growth. 

We  all,  indeed,  are  growing  inwardly  as  well  as 
outwardly,  but,  as  Henry  Ward  Beecher  says,  it 
is  of  great  importance  to  observe  what  it  is  that 
grows  most  in  us.  Is  it  our  intimacy  with  God, 
or  the  affairs  and  pleasures  of  the  world? 
Is  it  our  vision  of  what  lies  on  a  level  with  our 
eyes,  or  of  what  lies  above  that  level?  Is  it  the 
interest  in  the  things  that  we  must  leave  behind  us 
at  death,  or  in  what  we  can  carry  into  the  life 
beyond  death? 

V.  Along  with  growth  goes  continuity.  The 
tree  is  the  same  tree  year  after  year,  and  even 


LIFE  31 

century  after  century.  The  big  redwood  on  the 
slopes  of  the  Sierras  carries  on  its  inner  layers  the 
brand  left  by  a  fire  before  the  days  of  King  Solo- 
mon; and  it  is  just  the  same  tree  that  then  spread 
its  branches  over  the  remote  ancestors  of  the  bears 
and  coyotes  which  range  those  mountains  today. 
It  is  the  longest-lived  of  all  the  living  things 
known  to  us,  but  it  has  not  lost  its  organic  identity 
through  the  lapse  of  millenniums. 

So  with  our  bodily  life.  We  do  not  leave  it 
behind  us,  whatever  the  changes  it  undergoes.  It 
may  be  that  every  physical  particle  which  once 
constituted  the  body  has  been  eliminated  and  re- 
placed by  another.  Yet  it  retains  the  same  char- 
acter throughout  all  changes.  We  carry  to  our 
graves  the  scars  of  injuries  we  received  in  early 
infancy.  Our  hair  retains  the  same  hue,  our  eyes 
the  same  color,  our  faces  the  same  physiognomy, 
as  when  we  were  children.  Our  photographs 
taken  at  different  ages  show  marked  resemblances, 
along  with  the  differences  the  years  have  brought 
us. 

So  of  our  inward  life:  we  are  still  the  same 
selves  that  we  were  when  we  first  "found  our- 
selves," as  conscious  human  beings.  We  lose 
nothing  of  our  identity  with  the  lapse  of  years. 
When  I  was  a  small  boy,  I  threw  a  stone  at  a 
robin  redbreast,  and  broke  its  leg.  I  was  ashamed 


32  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

of  it  then ;  I  am  ashamed  of  it  now.  Although  I 
beheve  it  has  been  forgiven  me  by  the  Maker  of 
the  robin,  I  shall  never  forget  the  wanton  cruelty 
of  the  act.  It  has  kept  me  from  doing  anything 
that  would  hurt  a  bird  during  the  years  which 
have  elapsed  since  then.  I  know  it  was  I  who 
did  it;  that  I  was,  and  am,  the  small  white- 
headed  scamp  who  picked  up  that  stone  and  flung 
it  with  all  his  might,  and — for  once — did  not 
miss  the  mark.  So  of  many  a  worse  act  or  neg- 
lect in  the  intervening  years :  I  am  the  one 
who  did  or  omitted  to  do  these  things,  and 
never  can  I  escape  the  identity  or  the  respon- 
sibility. 

"Upon  me  lies  a  burden  which  I  cannot  shift," 
says  Frederick  Maurice,  "upon  any  other  human 
creature — the  burden  of  duties  unfulfilled,  words 
unspoken,  or  spoken  violently  and  untruly;  of 
holy  relationships  neglected;  of  days  wasted  for- 
ever; of  evil  thoughts  once  cherished,  which  are 
ever  appearing  as  fresh  as  when  they  were  first  ad- 
mitted into  the  heart;  of  talents  cast  away;  of 
affections  in  myself  or  in  others  trifled  with;  of 
light  within  turned  to  darkness.  So  speaks  the 
conscience;  so  speaks  or  has  spoken  the  con- 
science of  each  man." 

It  is  just  this  unbroken  identity  which  is  the 
most  terrible  fact  of  an  evil  life,  as  it  is  the  basis 


LIFE  33 

of  the  remorse  which  darkens  its  present,  and 
may  forever  darken  its  future,  with  despair. 
Memory  is  terribly  faithful  in  its  record  of  evil 
things;  how  faithful  has  been  shown  to  some  at 
moments  of  extreme  peril,  when  the  whole  past, 
with  all  its  details,  has  been  flashed  as  in  an  in- 
stant upon  their  mental  vision.  It  is  from  such 
experiences  that  we  come  to  understand  the  state- 
ment that  when  the  dead  stand  before  God,  there 
will  be  an  opening  of  the  book  for  each  of  the 
human  race,  and  that  the  dead  will  be  judged  out 
of  the  things  which  are  written  in  the  books 
(Revelation  xx:i2).  Unless  there  be  some 
cleansing  power  which  can  efface  the  dreadful 
records  kept  by  the  heart,  then  a  future  of  re- 
morse and  misery  is  all  that  is  possible  to  every 
one  who  has  defiled  his  conscience  with  sin.  "If 
we  walk  in  the  light,  as  he  is  in  the  light,  we  have 
fellowship  one  with  another,  and  the  blood  of 
Jesus  his  Son  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin.  If  we 
say  that  we  have  no  sin  we  deceive  ourselves, 
and  the  truth  is  not  in  us.  If  we  confess  our  sins, 
he  is  faithful  and  righteous  to  forgive  us  our  sins, 
and  to  cleanse  us  from  all  unrighteousness"  (I 
John  i :  7-9).  Without  that  cleansing,  there  is  no 
gospel  for  men. 

There  is,  however,  a  joyful  side  to  this  truth  of 
the  continuity  of  life — it  is  that  we  need  leave 


34  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

nothing  behind  us  that  is  worth  taking  along  with 
us.  It  is,  indeed,  our  duty  and  our  right  to  lay 
aside  the  limitations  which  cramp  each  age  of  life, 
and  yet  to  carry  with  us  all  that  belongs  to  the 
strength  and  the  insight  of  that  age.  The  apostle 
says  that  when  he  became  a  man,  he  put  away 
what  was  childish;  but  he  did  not  lay  aside  what 
was  childlike  in  his  nature.  The  true  Christian, 
whatever  his  years  or  his  experience,  never  ceases 
to  be  a  child  in  all  the  qualities  which  bring  the 
child  near  to  the  gate  of  the  kingdom.  Our  Lord 
told  Nicodemus  that  to  b'  born  anew  (or  from 
above)  is  the  prerequisite  for  entering  the  king- 
dom (John  iii :  3,  5)  ;  and  he  told  the  apostles  that 
"whosoever  shall  not  receive  the  kingdom  of  God 
as  a  little  child,  he  shall  in  no  wise  enter  therein" 
(Luke  xviii :  17).  The  birth  from  above  renews 
us  into  childlikeness,  jvist  as  we  were  born  into 
natural  childhood  by  natural  birth.  And  to  em- 
phasize the  relation,  he  set  a  little  child  in  the 
midst  when  he  set  forth  the  nature  of  regenera- 
tion. 

Some  people  have  been  puzzled  to  see  how 
children  are  saved.  The  gospel  says  the  difficulty 
lies  in  getting  grown  people  to  become  children 
for  their  salvation.  To  do  that,  they  must  lay 
aside  their  hard  worldly  wisdom ;  their  dullness  in 
the  sense  of  right  and  wrong ;  their  fretting  about 


LIFE  35 

to-morrow;  their  lack  of  simple  dependence  upon 
our  Father  in  heaven;  their  unreadiness  to  trust 
him  for  the  grandest  things  he  promises;  their 
want  of  any  sense  of  the  wonder  in  the  world  and 
in  life;  their  resentful  malice  toward  those  who 
have  injured  them.  Our  Lord  himself,  in  his 
growth  into  manhood,  left  nothing  behind  him 
that  belonged  to  a  perfect  child.  It  would  have 
been  better  if  the  revisers  had  left  untouched  the 
passage  in  which  the  church  speaks  to  the  Father 
of  "thy  holy  Child  Jesus"  (Acts  iv:3o),  for 
while  the  Greek  word  has  also  the  sense  of 
"servant,"  yet  its  primary  meaning  cannot  have 
been  far  from  the  thought  of  the  apostle. 

Wordsworth,  the  first  modern  poet  who  has 
opened  the  book  of  childhood  to  us,  gives  expres- 
sion to  the  Christian  idea : — 

My  heart  leaps  up  when  I  behold 

A  rainbow  in  the  sky: 
So  was  it  when  my  life  began ; 
So  is  it  now  I  am  a  man; 
So  be  it  when  I  shall  grow  old, 

Or  let  me  die ! 
And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  in  natural  piety. 

VI.  Nature,  to  a  superficial  view,  seems  to  fore- 
tell death  as  the  end  of  life.  The  living  thing 
dies  and  passes  away  in  the  dissolution  of  the 


36  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

organism  into  its  elements;  the  dead  thing  alone 
remains  the  same. 

Nature,  however,  abounds  in  intimations  that 
life  may  pass  through  and  survive  deathlike 
changes,  v^hich  open  upon  another  and  a  nobler  ex- 
istence. One  of  these  is  the  transformation  which 
insects  undergo  in  passing  from  the  chrysalis 
stage  of  their  existence  to  that  in  which  they  at- 
tain the  full  growth  and  freedom.  This  trans- 
formation helped  the  Greeks  at  least  to  believe  in 
a  life  after  death.  They  gave  the  name  Psyche 
(soul)  to  the  butterfly,  because  they  saw  in  its 
passage  from  a  creeping  grub  to  a  flying  thing  a 
parable  and  prophecy  of  the  change  death  would 
work  upon  themselves. 

Mrs.  Alfred  Gatty,  in  one  of  her  beautiful 
parables  of  nature,  takes  as  an  instance  the 
larva  of  the  dragon  fly,  whose  life  is  spent  under 
water  until  he  is  overtaken  by  languor  and  pain, 
and  is  driven  to  climb  the  stalk  of  some  water- 
plant  toward  the  surface.  His  kindred  follow 
him  with  pity  and  sympathy,  and  think  of  him  as 
lost  and  gone,  when  he  emerges  from  his  shell, 
and  changes  into  a  swift  and  strong  master  of 
flight,  whose  "four  gauzy  pinions  flash  back  the 
sunshine."  Nor  can  he  return  to  the  state  in 
which  he  had  lived,  to  explain  to  his  brothers  the 
change  he  has  undergone.     They  go  on  mourning 


LIFE  Z7 

his  loss,  while  the  empty  shell  that  had  contained 
him  clings  to  the  stem  by  which  he  had  climbed. 

In  other  cases  the  larva  buries  itself  in  the  earth 
when  the  period  of  change  approaches,  and  rises 
from  its  grave  to  the  higher  existence.  Mrs. 
Trumbull-Slosson  makes  a  beautiful  use  of  this 
in  one  of  the  stories  of  her  "Seven  Dreamers." 

While  there  is  no  simple  organism  which  does 
not  look  forward  to  the  change  we  call  death, 
there  are  complex  organisms,  each  with  a  life  of  its 
own,  whose  nature  implies  immortality.  The 
nation  is  one  of  these,  and  the  church  is  another. 

Some  theorists  have  run  the  parallel  so  far  be- 
tween the  life  of  the  individual  man  and  that  of  the 
nation  as  to  predict  a  time  of  necessary  decay  and 
a  final  death  for  every  one  of  them.  Nations, 
however,  die  only  by  suicide,  through  a  general 
selfishness  displacing  public  spirit,  and  the  love 
of  country  perishing  out  of  the  hearts  of  the  peo- 
ple. History,  as  Dr.  Elisha  Mulford,  in  his  great 
book  on  "The  Nation,"  says,  is  not  a  series  of 
funerals.  England  has  seen  a  thousand  years  of 
national  life,  and  is  as  full  of  vitality  as  at  any 
earlier  stage  of  her  existence. 

The  church  also  is  a  deathless  organization. 
She  came  into  existence  when  Peter,  in  the  name  of 
the  Twelve,  uttered  the  great  confession;  and  in 
that  moment   our  Lord  pronounced   the   grand 


38  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

promise  that  the  gates  of  Hades,  the  power  of 
death,  should  never  prevail  against  her.  At  times, 
she  has  seemed  to  fall  into  a  sleep  that  might  have 
proved  deadly ;  but  always  she  was  quickened  into 
a  fresh  life  by  the  indwelling  Spirit,  roused  to  a 
new  sense  of  the  work  she  had  to  do  for  God,  and 
equipped  with  new  instruments  to  do  it,  in  the  per- 
sons of  prophets  and  reformers,  preachers  and 
singers.  So  she  lives  on  through  the  ages,  an 
immortal  organization,  with  part  of  her  member- 
ship in  this  world  of  conflict,  and  part  in  the 
world  of  triumph  beyond  death,  but  all  gathered 
under  the  one  Head  which  is  Christ  (Ephesians 
i:  lo). 


Ill 

SHEEP 


CHAPTER  III 


SHEEP 


The  Bible  has  more  to  say  about  sheep  than  any 
other  animal.  There  were  no  cats  in  Palestine, 
and  the  dogs  were  outcasts.  Horses  were  very 
few  and  exotic.  Asses,  sheep,  and  oxen  were  the 
domestic  animals,  and  of  the  three  the  sheep  were 
by  far  the  most  numerous,  and  came  closest  to 
man.  The  way  in  which  the  prophet  Nathan 
speaks  of  the  poor  man's  ewe  lamb,  which  ''grew 
up  together  with  him,  and  his  children,"  and 
which  "did  eat  of  his  own  morsel,  and  drank  of 
his  own  cup,  and  lay  in  his  bosom,"  is  an  indica- 
tion that  sheep  were  household  pets  in  the  place 
now  filled  by  cats,  dogs,  and  other  animals.  The 
apostle  Paul,  indeed,  never  mentions  either  sheep 
or  shepherds ;  but  he  was  born  and  brought  up  in 
Cilicia,  where  goats  took  the  place  of  sheep,  and 
where  he  was  taught  to  make  tents  from  the  coarse 
cloth  made  from  goats'  hair. 

The  sheep  played  a  very  important  part  in  the 
history  and  discipline  of  the  elect  people.  From 
the  time  of  Abel  down  to  the  giving  of  the  law  at 
Mount  Sinai,  the  keeping  of  sheep  was  their  work. 


41 


42  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

When  any  of  them  turned  aside  from  this  to  till- 
age of  the  soil,  trouble  always  followed.  So  it 
came  upon  Noah,  after  he  made  his  vineyard ;  and 
on  Jacob,  after  he  built  his  house  on  the  parcel  of 
ground  he  bought  in  Shechem.  Through  those 
centuries,  whether  spent  in  Palestine  or  in  Egypt, 
the  Hebrews  were  shepherds  and  nothing  else,  de- 
pending upon  the  animal  which  supplied  them 
with  both  food  and  clothing,  and  for  whose  sup- 
port they  must  move  from  place  to  place  in  most 
of  the  localities  where  they  sought  a  home.  Even 
when  they  obtained  possession  of  their  own  coun- 
try, and  became  a  people  of  city-dwellers,  with 
fields  and  vineyards  of  their  own,  the  care  of 
sheep  remained  a  chief  industry.  The  tribes  who 
settled  beyond  Jordan  had  no  other  employment; 
and  as  much  of  the  hill  country  of  Judaea  was  unfit 
for  tillage,  but  supplied  grazing  for  sheep  and 
goats,  the  majority  of  the  people  even  west  of  the 
Jordan  seem  to  have  been  sheep-owners,  if  not 
shepherds. 

There  was  a  wise  purpose  in  this.  The  keep- 
ing of  sheep  exercises  a  refining  influence  upon 
character.  The  life  of  the  hunter,  which  Esau 
preferred  to  it,  tends  to  make  men  savage  and 
cruel.  The  shepherd's  work  teaches  them  to  be 
humane  and  kindly.  He  who  is  to  live  by  sheep 
must  care  for  sheep.     He  must  keep  them  on  his 


SHEEP  43 

mind  at  all  times,  as  their  protector  against  wild 
beasts,  and  their  provider,  to  lead  them  to  the 
green  pastures  and  the  still  waters.  In  more 
northern  countries  he  must  plan  to  protect  them 
against  sudden  storms,  and  burial  under  the  snow- 
drifts. It  is  well  known.  The  London  Times  once 
said,  that  those  who  invest  in  sheep  simply  to  make 
money  out  of  them  are  sure  to  lose  money.  They 
must  have  another  motive  if  they  are  to  get  on 
with  them,  or  at  least  they  must  employ  as  shep- 
herds those  who  have  that  motive,  and  who  will 
be  always  planning  for  the  sheep,  often  against 
the  indifference  of  the  owner.*  The  mere  hire- 
ling, who  does  not  make  the  sheep  his  own  in  his 
interest  in  them,  is  useless  in  every  way. 

The  calamity  of  America  before  Columbus  was 
that  it  had  no  sheep,  except  one  wild  and  un- 
tamable species  of  mountain  sheep.  Not  only 
was  the  refining  influence  of  the  shepherd's  life 
wanting  to  the  aborigines,  but  they  had  nothing  to 
carry  them  over  the  transition  from  the  life  of  the 
savage  hunter  to  that  of  the  settled  farmer.  When 


*  It  illustrated  this  from  the  experience  of  those  who 
employed  convicts  on  the  big  Australian  sheep-walks.  The 
pickpockets  made  the  best  shepherds,  because  they  had  been 
accustomed  to  watch  closely  those  they  meant  to  rob.  Men 
of  better  education,  who  had  been  transported  for  forgery 
and  similar  crimes,  were  of  no  use  at  all. 


44  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

General  Miles,  in  1886,  brought  the  hitherto  un- 
tamable Apaches  to  terms,  he  secured  for  them 
from  the  national  Government  a  supply  of  sheep 
and  cattle.  They  soon  became  shepherds  and 
cowboys,  and  never  went  on  the  warpath  again. 

God  had  a  further  purpose  in  keeping  his 
people  to  the  work  of  the  shepherd.  It  enabled 
them  to  understand  better  his  own  relation  to 
them,  as  their  Shepherd.  Just  as  they  had  to 
keep  on  their  minds  the  flock  of  silly  sheep  they, 
tended,  so  he  was  caring  for  them,  providing  for 
their  wants,  defending  them  against  their  enemies, 
and  showing  them  his  goodness  through  all  their 
lives.  He  was  teaching  them  to  say,  "The  Lord 
is  my  shepherd,"  and  to  recognize  him  as  ''the 
Shepherd  of  Israel,"  as  well  as  of  each  single  soul 
among  them.  That  is  the  meaning  of  that  won- 
derful Twenty-third  Psalm,  in  which  the  shep- 
herd's care  of  his  sheep  is  recognized  as  a  parable 
of  God's  care  of  his  people.  Alongside  it  stands 
the  tenth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  according  to 
John,  in  which  our  Lord  takes  the  place  of  the 
Jehovah  of  the  Old  Testament  as  the  Shepherd  of 
the  spirits  of  men. 

It  is,  however,  not  the  shepherd,  but  the  sheep, 
that  is  my  subject.  There  are  points  about  this 
animal  which  are  suggestive,  in  connection  with 
the  use  made  of  it  in  Bible  teaching. 


SHEEP  45 

I.  The  sheep  is  a  mountain  animal.  Man  has 
brought  it  down  to  the  plains  for  his  convenience ; 
but  it  belongs  to  the  hills,  and  it  acquired  its  habits 
there.  Its  thick  fleece  was  given  it  as  its  de- 
fense against  the  cold  winds  of  the  hills.  It  still 
shows  an  instinct  to  seek  the  hills.  If  you  turn  a 
number  of  lambs  loose  in  a  field,  which  has  a 
hillock  in  it,  they  will  make  for  that  hillock,  and 
fight  each  other  for  possession  of  it,  and  find  hap- 
piness in  perching  on  it.  The  mountaineering 
habits  of  their  remote  ancestors  find  vent  in  this. 

As  God's  sheep  we  also  belong  to  the  hills.  We 
are  native  to  a  higher  level  than  that  on  which  we 
find  ourselves,  and  all  that  is  best  in  us  yearns  for 
that  level.  In  our  noblest  moments  we  have 
glimpses  of  it,  and  we  know  that  there  the  pulse 
beats  more  strongly,  and  we  breathe  quicker  and 
more  joyfully,  than  in  the  damps  and  mists  of  the 
lower  plains  of  life.  Like  the  lambs,  we  climb 
joyfully  any  petty  hillock  that  suggests  our  right- 
ful height.  Even  our  worldly  ambitions  are  often 
an  expression  of  our  restlessnesss  on  the  plains, 
and  our  eagerness  for  what  corresponds  to  our 
origin  on  the  heights,  however  mistaken  the  means 
we  use  for  this. 

II.  As  the  sheep  comes  from  a  level  on  which 
mud  and  mire  are  unknown,  it  is  a  clean  animal. 
On  the  plains  it  often  falls  into  the  mire,  but  it 


46  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

never  stays  in  it.  It  always  struggles  to  be  out 
of  it  and  to  be  clean  again.  The  pig  belongs  to 
the  lower  level,  and  has  no  dislike  to  mud  and 
mire.  It  enjoys  them,  and  returns  to  its  wallow- 
ing, if  you  clean  it  (II  Peter  ii :  22). 

As  God's  sheep  we  yearn  for  cleanness.  We 
also  may  fall  into  the  mire  of  sin  and  uncleanness, 
but  we  find  no  rest  there.  We  struggle  to  get  out 
of  the  filth,  and  long  to  be  clean  again,  as  did 
David,  when  he  wrote  the  Fifty-first  Psalm : — 

Purify  me  with  hyssop,  and  I  shall  be  clean: 
Wash  me,  and  I  shall  be  whiter  than  snow. 

He  was  badly  defiled  when  he  wrote  that,  hav- 
ing fallen  into  two  of  the  worst  sins  a  man  can  be 
guilty  of.  But  by  the  help  of  God's  Spirit  he  was 
taught  the  way  and  the  speech  of  a  true  repent- 
ance, and  has  been  teaching  these  to  the  world 
ever  since.  An  American  poet,  the  Rev.  John  B. 
Tabb,  gives  expression  to  this  truth  in  a  poem  he 
calls  "The  Difference"  : — 

Unc'  Si,  de  Holy  Bible  say, 

In  speakin'  ob  de  jus', 
Dat  he  do  fall  sebben  times  a  day: 

Now,  how's  de  sinner  wuss? 

Well,  chile,  de  slip  may  come  to  all; 

But  den  de  diffe'nce  foller, — 
For  ef  you  watch  him  when  he  fall, 

De  jus'  man  do  not  waller. 


SHEEP  47 

III.  The  sheep,  as  a  mountain  animal,  found 
safety  on  those  craggy  heights,  and  escaped  from 
its  foes  by  the  swiftness  of  its  leap  from  rock  to 
rock.  When  brought  down  to  the  plains  it  leaves 
behind  it  its  means  of  safety,  and  becomes  the  most 
helpless  and  defenseless  of  animals.  It  has 
almost  no  courage,  no  means  of  swift  flight,  and 
generally  no  weapon  of  defense.  It  must  find  its 
safety  in  the  shepherd's  care  for  it ;  and  he  must  be 
one  who  takes  all  the  risks  for  it,  even  to  laying 
down  his  life  for  it  if  need  arise. 

God  does  not  pay  us  the  compliment  of  saying 
we  are  either  wise  or  resourceful,  when  he  calls  us 
his  sheep.  He  knows  we  are  always  in  peril  on 
the  lower  levels  of  life,  and  must  lift  up  our  eyes 
to  the  hills  to  seek  our  safety.  We  must  find  it  in 
him  who  came  down  to  take  us  into  his  care,  and  to 
lay  down  his  life  for  his  sheep. 

"Of  all  the  sheep  that  are  fed  on  earth,"  says 
Frederick  Pease,  "Christ's  sheep  are  the  most 
simple.  Always  losing  themselves;  doing  little 
else  in  this  world  but  lose  themselves ;  never  find- 
ing themselves ;  always  found  by  Some  One  else ; 
getting  perpetually  into  sloughs,  and  snows,  and 
bramble  thickets;  like  to  die  there,  but  for  their 
Shepherd,  who  is  forever  finding  them  and  bear- 
ing them  back,  with  torn  fleeces,  and  eyes  full  of 
fear." 


48  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

IV.  It  was  from  the  heights  that  the  sheep 
brought  the  habit  of  following  its  leader.  On  the 
hills  the  leader  must  see  for  all,  and  if  any  do  not 
jump  where  he  does,  they  are  likely  to  go  headlong 
down  some  chasm.  So  if  you  hold  a  stick  before 
the  bellwether,  and  make  him  jump  it,  every  sheep 
in  the  flock  will  jump  when  it  comes  to  that  spot, 
even  though  the  stick  has  been  taken  away. 
"Like  a  flock  of  sheep,"  has  become  a  proverbial 
expression  for  the  way  in  which  a  crowd  or  mob 
of  men  do  just  as  their  leaders  do,  without  any 
thought  of  their  own.  A  class  of  little  girls  were 
asked,  "If  there  are  six  sheep  resting  under  a  wall, 
and  one  of  them  gets  up  and  jumps  over  it,  how 
many  will  be  left?"  Most  of  them  said  there 
would  be  five  left,  but  one  girl,  a  farmer's  daugh- 
ter, said :  "There  will  be  none  left.  If  one  goes, 
all  the  rest  will  follow." 

In  those  also  whom  God  calls  his  sheep  there  is 
the  instinct  to  seek  a  leader  and  to  follow  him.  It 
often  leads  to  perverse  and  foolish  choices  of  a 
leader.  It  makes  us  run  after  quacks  and  mis- 
leaders,  if  we  have  not  found  the  right  Master. 
Some  sort  of  master  we  must  have.  We  were  not 
born  to  be  masterless  and  independent  beings.  "It 
is  always  a  choice  of  masters,"  says  Phillips 
Brooks,  "to  which  Christ  is  urging  men.  It  is  not 
by  striking  off  allegiance,  but  by  finding  your  true 


SHEEP  49 

Lord,  and  serving  him  with  a  complete  submis- 
sion, that  you  escape  from  slavery."  Some  one 
we  must  serve  and  follow,  and  we  often  show  it 
by  submitting  to  a  yoke  which  is  bondage.  ''Other 
lords  have  had  dominion  over  us,"  because  our 
hearts  craved  the  true,  wise,  liberating  leadership 
of  the  True  Shepherd,  who  goes  before  his  sheep 
and  calls  them  by  name. 

But  it  is  to  no  blind  following  that  he  calls  men 
as  his  sheep.  They  are  children  of  light,  and  of 
the  day,  and  are  called  upon  to  judge  of  them- 
selves what  is  right  (Luke  xii:57).  What  he 
asks  of  us  is  not  thoughtless  acquiescence  in  au- 
thority or  tradition,  but  the  roused  and  active  ex- 
ercise of  our  powers  of  intelligence,  in  the  as- 
surance that  the  more  men  think  the  more  they  will 
thank — the  more  they  use  their  powers  of  discrim- 
ination, the  more  they  will  discern  the  truth  of 
his  claims  to  their  allegiance.  The  Scriptures,  as 
Coleridge  says,  distinguish  themselves  from  all 
other  books  which  claim  to  disclose  the  mind  of 
God  to  men  by  the  frequency  and  the  urgency  with 
which  they  call  upon  us  to  exercise  our  powers  of 
thought,  and  by  their  assurance  that  this  will  bring 
us  not  to  denial  or  rejection  of  the  truth,  but  to 
acceptance  of  it. 


IV 
FOOD 


CHAPTER  IV 

FOOD 

In  many  if  not  most  of  the  forms  of  worship 
known  to  us,  food  holds  a  place,  through  some 
sort  of  feast  being  recognized  as  a  symbol  of  the 
relation  between  the  worshiper  and  the  object  of 
his  worship.  In  most  cases  this  is  a  feast  in  which 
they  both  partake,  and  in  which  the  deity  accepts 
the  relation  of  host  and  protector  to  his  guest, 
with  all  that  belongs  to  the  obligations  of  hos- 
pitality. He  is  thus  pledged  to  a  perpetual  good 
will  and  helpfulness.  Commonly,  the  matter  of 
the  feast  is  a  sacrifice,  first  given  to  the  god  and  his 
official  representatives,  and  divided  among  all 
concerned  according  to  recognized  rules.  An  at- 
tempt has  been  made  to  explain  in  this  way  the 
sacrifices  and  feasts  of  the  Mosaic  system.  But 
this  is  to  misconceive  the  biblical  conception  of  the 
relation  of  Jehovah  to  his  covenant  people.  That 
relation  is  strictly  conditioned  upon  their  ob- 
servance of  his  law,  and  has  nothing  of  the  abso- 
lute character  of  the  obligations  existing  between 
either  kinsman  and  kinsman,  or  between  host  and 
guest. 

In  the  Mosaic  law  feasts  hold  a  very  outstand- 

53 


54  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

ing  place.  Three  great  feasts  every  year  drew  the 
people  of  all  parts  of  the  land  to  the  center  of  the 
nation's  worship,  but  it  was  in  that  of  the  pass- 
over  that  the  people's  feeding  upon  a  sacrifice  was 
the  central  fact.  It  was  a  symbolic  statement  of 
the  truth  that  the  life  of  the  human  spirit  is  as  de- 
pendent upon  what  it  gets  from  God,  as  are  the 
life,  health,  and  growth  of  the  human  body  upon 
natural  food.  Yet  there  are  few  passages  in  the 
Old  Testament  in  which  this  is  brought  into  clear 
view.  In  the  Thirty-fourth  Psalm  the  exhorta- 
tion is  found : — 

Oh  taste  and  see  that  Jehovah  is  good: 
Blessed  is  the  man  that  taketh  refuge  in  him. 

And  the  prophet  Amos  (viii:  ii)  says,  "Behold, 
the  days  come,  saith  the  Lord  Jehovah,  that  I  will 
send  a  famine  in  the  land,  not  a  famine  of  bread, 
nor  a  thirst  for  water,  but  of  hearing  the  words  of 
Jehovah." 

It  is  in  the  New  Testament  that  not  only  is  food 
used  symbolically,  but  the  truth  that  food  in  one 
of  the  great  parables  of  God  is  insisted  upon.  It 
is  especially  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  that  our  Lord  does  this,  by  presenting  the 
spiritual  reality  to  which  it  corresponds. 

But  let  me  observe  first  of  all  that  our  Lord 
seemed  to  find  an  especial  pleasure  in  the  feasts  of 


FOOD  55 

his  countrymen,  and  not  only  in  their  solemn  reli- 
gious festivals,  but  in  their  social  feasts,  to  which 
neighbor  invited  neighbor.  He  seems  to  have 
thought  these  the  most  innocent  of  their  social 
usages,  and  the  best  fitted  to  develop  in  them  the 
generosity,  the  courtesy,  and  the  cheerfulness 
which  became  the  children  of  the  kingdom.  While 
the  rest  of  their  life  was  based  upon  the  Mammon- 
ite  principle  of  "nothing  for  nothing,"  their  feasts 
were  given  and  not  purchased,  and  therefore  like 
the  grand  generosity  of  their  Father  in  heaven. 
While  elsewhere  they  stood  upon  their  rights,  and 
made  the  most  of  their  claims  upon  others,  those 
who  came  to  a  feast  in  the  spirit  of  it  would  be 
thinking  more  of  others  than  of  themselves.  In 
the  fourteenth  chapter  of  the  Third  Gospel  he 
holds  up  the  ideal  of  feast-making  and  feast-tak- 
ing, and  contrasts  with  this  the  self-seeking  which 
spoils  the  feast,  the  rivalry  which  would  convert 
it  into  an  exchange  of  favors,  and  the  joyless, 
worldly  spirit  which  would  put  feasting  out  of  life, 
and  would  substitute  the  enjoyment  of  personal 
possessions  in  its  place.  I  am  not  speaking  here 
of  the  spiritual  significance  of  the  teachings  of 
that  chapter,  but  of  their  social  bearings. 

The  next  thing  we  have  to  notice  is  that  when  he 
came  to  establish  the  two  symbols  or  sacraments  of 
his  kingdom,  as  he  took  one  of  them  from  the 


56  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

purifications  of  the  Old  Testament,  so  he  took  the 
other  from  its  feasts.  In  each  case,  he  takes  an 
immemorial  and  almost  universal  usage,  in  which 
are  employed  the  simplest  elements  of  our  human 
life,  and  sets  them  in  such  new  associations,  and 
surrounds  them  with  such  new  sanctities,  that  they 
become  new  things  to  us.  He  could  be  original 
without  affecting  novelty. 

Luther  rightly  says  that  the  sixth  chapter  of 
John  does  not  speak  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  but  of 
that  of  which  the  Lord's  Supper  speaks.  It  pre- 
sents to  us  the  mystery  of  spiritual  nutrition,  in 
its  parallel  to  the  mystery  of  natural  nutrition. 
For  both  are  mysterious,  and  not  one  alone.  We 
can  trace  the  steps  by  which  food  is  digested  into 
chyle,  and  chyle  is  transformed  into  blood,  and 
blood  in  its  circulation  through  vein  and  artery  re- 
places the  waste  caused  by  every  exertion  of  our 
bodily  powers.  But  to  know  these  steps  is  not  to 
know  how  the  vital  force  transforms  dead  sub- 
stance into  living  tissue. 

How  can  the  mute  unconscious  bread 

Become  the  living  tongue, 
And  nerves,  through  which  our  pleasures  spread, 

And  which  by  pain  are  wrung? 

Can  lifeless  water  help  to  form 

The  living,  leaping  blood. 
Whose  gentle  flow,  in  passion's  storm 

Becomes  a  ruffled  flood? 


FOOD  57 

Thomas  Toke  Lynch  writes  in  "The  Rivulet."  We 
can  escape  all  sense  of  the  wonder  in  this  by  dull- 
ness of  mind,  or  through  never  giving  it  thought ; 
but  otherwise  we  must  feel  that  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  a  mystery  in  our  daily  bread. 

Our  Lord  in  the  synagogue  of  Capernaum  in- 
sists on  the  spiritual  process,  to  which  our  daily 
bread  corresponds.  There  are  three  steps  in 
his  presentation  of  it:  (i)  That  he,  the  Son  of 
man,  can  give  those  who  hear  him  bread  which 
will  endure  unto  everlasting  life,  whereas  the 
natural  bread  perishes  in  our  use  of  it.  (2) 
That  he  himself  is  the  bread,  which  comes  down 
from  heaven  for  the  life  of  the  world.  (3)  That 
this  bread  of  life  is  his  flesh,  and  his  blood; 
that  is,  his  humanity  as  the  Son  of  man, 
in  which  the  spirits  of  men  are  to  find  their 
nourishment  as  spirits,  unto  a  life  everlasting. 
It  is  not  his  example,  or  his  teaching,  or  his  in- 
fluence, which  is  the  spiritual  food  of  men,  but 
himself.  It  is  through  a  union  with  him,  as 
close  and  appropriating  as  that  which  their  bodies 
sustain  to  their  food,  that  they  are  nourished 
into  spiritual  life,  health,  and  growth. 

1.  The  first  point  in  the  parable  of  food  is 
that  it  teaches  us  the  dependence  of  man.  We 
are  not  little  gods,  to  stand  alone  and  supply  our 
own  strength.     We  are  so  constructed  that  our 


58  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

bodies  are  undergoing  a  constant  destruction 
and  renewal.  Every  act,  every  thought,  every 
emotion,  works  to  the  destruction  of  animal  tis- 
sues, leaving  an  effete  matter,  which  is  elimi- 
nated by  various  organs,  and  through  appropriate 
channels.  If  this  elimination  were  not  accom- 
panied by  a  replacement  of  what  is  lost,  we 
should  perish  of  exhaustion.  When  some  or- 
ganic failure  makes  the  replacement  impossible 
or  insufficient,  we  waste  away  through  innutri- 
tion, and  our  bodies  die.  To  our  ordinary  con- 
sciousness our  bodies  are  permanent  solidities. 
They  are,  however,  in  a  state  of  flux,  like  a 
river,  whose  bed  would  be  left  empty  if  the 
onflow  of  its  waters  were  not  replaced  by  a  con- 
stantly fresh  supply.  It  is  from  the  world  with- 
out us  and  beneath  us  that  we  are  constantly 
replacing  our  bodies  in  the  shape  of  food. 

Unlike  our  bodies,  our  spirits  are  not  built  up 
of  separate  particles  which  can  be  destroyed  and 
replaced.  But  in  their  case  also,  constant  nutri- 
tion is  required  to  their  true  life  and  growth. 
We  live  only  by  the  reception  of  life  from  the 
Son  of  man.  He  is  made  unto  us  wisdom,  and 
righteousness,  and  sanctification,  and  redemp- 
tion, and  power,  and  whatever  else  our  spirits 
call  for.  We  have  none  of  these  things  of  our 
own,  but  only  a  capacity  to  receive  them  from 


FOOD  59 

the  Son  of  man.  From  him  come  our  faith  to 
grasp,  our  strength  to  resist,  our  wisdom  to 
guide  our  lives.  We  have  these  only  by  our 
incessantly  receiving  them. 

"To  keep  the  lamp  alive 

With   oil   we  fill  the  bowl; 
'Tis  water  makes  the  willow   thrive, 
And  grace  that  feeds  the  soul. 

"Man's  wisdom  is  to  seek 
His  strength  in  God  alone; 
And  e'en  an  angel  would  be  weak 
Who  trusted  in  his  own. 

"Retreat  beneath  his  wings, 
And  in  his  grace  confide ! 
This  more  exalts  the  King  of  kings 
Than  all  your  works  beside. 

"In  Jesus  is  our  store; 

Grace  issues  from  his  throne; 
Whoever  says,  T  want  no  more,' 
Confesses  he  has  none." 

II.  The  fact  that  we  are  hungry  when  we 
have  not  been  fed  at  the  usual  or  right  time  is 
a  part  of  the  parable.  Natural  hunger  is  a  benefi- 
cent arrangement.  The  human  race  would 
perish  but  for  hunger,  which  impresses  upon  us" 
painfully  the  necessity  of  replacing  the  waste  of 
our  bodies.  Without  it  we  easily  might  carry 
our  abstinence  to  a  point  from  which  there  would 
be  no  recovery. 


6o  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

There  is  the  same  beneficence  in  the  hunger 
of  the  human  spirit  for  God.  We  can  still  and 
silence  it  for  a  time.  The  prodigal  did  so,  when 
he  was  busy  with  his  waste  of  his  substance; 
but  there  arose  a  mighty  famine  in  that  land, 
and  it  reached  him  as  well  as  others.  He  flew 
for  help  to  man,  and  found  only  degradation 
and  disappointment.  He  envied  the  very  swine 
their  fullness  and  their  satisfaction,  but  could  not 
share  it.  He  could  not,  because  he  was  a  son, 
with  a  father's  house  in  the  distance,  and  plenty 
of  bread  for  him  there  if  he  would  seek  it.  When 
he  came  to  himself,  after  being  beside  himself, 
that  is  insane,  he  did  seek  it,  and  found  it. 

The  essential  misery  and  unrest  of  a  godless 
life  is  but  the  hunger  of  a  disinherited  spirit  for 
the  bread  at  the  Father's  table.  Even  the  par- 
oxysms of  men's  sinning  are,  sometimes  at  least, 
proof  of  their  failure  to  find  true  satisfaction 
in  life.  It  is  our  grandeur,  as  it  is  our  pain, 
that  our  hearts  are  too  large  for  the  whole  world 
to  fill  them,  and  that  only  the  bread  that  comes 
down  from  heaven  for  the  life  of  the  world  can 
do  so.     As  Carl  Spencer  says : — 

Whoso  the  downward  paths  hath  trod, 
The  wrecks  of  human  life  to  scan, 
Must  write,  "This  creature,  being  man, 

Was  ruined  having  less  than  God." 


FOOD  6i 

But  hunger  is  not  always  the  paroxysm  of 
starvation.  It  is  the  daily  and  pleasant  experi- 
ence of  wholesome  natures.  The  saint  hungers 
after  God  as  well  as  the  sinner,  but  with  no 
despairing  anguish.  It  is  the  preparation  for 
a  fresh  enjoyment  of  what  is  always  within 
the  reach  of  his  faith.  And  as  the  absence 
of  natural  hunger  before  we  partake  of  food 
is  a  proof  of  inferior  vitality,  so  is  it  in  the 
spiritual  life.  "Blessed  are  they  that  hunger 
and  thirst  after  righteousness :  for  they  shall 
be  filled."  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a 
false  satiety,  a  self-satisfaction  with  what  we 
are,  which  was  the  sin  of  the  Pharisees : 
''Woe  unto  you,  ye  that  are  full!  for  ye  shall 
hunger." 

III.  This  parable  of  nutrition  is  like  all  the 
rest  in  that  it  does  not  'Svalk  on  all  fours."  The 
correspondence  between  the  two  kinds  is  not  com- 
plete and  absolute.  The  body  is  nourished  on 
what  is  lower  than  itself,  and  accomplishes  this 
by  assimilating  its  food  to  itself.  We  use  for 
this  only  impersonal,  selfless  things,  which  we 
may  treat  as  means  to  our  ends.  The  horror  of 
cannibalism  is  common  to  all  races  which  have 
risen  to  the  point  of  discerning  what  human  per- 
sonality means,  and  grows  out  of  the  fact  that 
the  victim   is  a  personal   self  equally  with  us. 


62  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Those  races  which  ascribe  selfhood  to  animals 
have  a  horror  of  eating  them. 

The  human  spirit,  on  the  contrary,  feeds  only 
upon  what  is  above  itself;  but  by  the  law  that 
the  higher  assimilates  the  lower,  it  is  assimilated 
to  its  food.  "He  that  eateth  my  flesh,"  says  the 
Saviour,  "and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  eternal 
life;  and  I  will  raise  him  up  at  the  last  day  .  .  . 
He  .  .  .  abideth  in  me,  and  I  in  him.  As  the 
living  Father  sent  me,  and  I  live  because  of  the 
Father ;  so  he  that  eateth  me,  he  also  shall  live  be- 
cause of  me."  This  great  saying  has  been  fulfilled 
in  millions  of  lives,  in  that  they  have  been  fed, 
nourished,  and  comforted  out  of  this  one  life.  We 
can  see  in  a  wooden  fashion  what  the  intercourse 
between  man  and  man  may  attain  to.  We  have 
glimpses  of  the  possibility  of  two  human  spirits 
almost  transcending  the  limits  which  inclose  per- 
sonality, and  living  in  and  for  each  other.  Jesus 
calmly  says,  "Abide  in  me,  and  I  in  you!"  and 
although  we  know  not  what  it  means  or  how  it 
is  possible,  we  discover  that  it  is  the  most  real  of 
human  experiences. 

IV.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  savage  races, 
mankind  are  agreed  in  making  mealtimes  occa- 
sions of  social  reunion,  of  at  least  the  family.  It 
has  been  shown  that  our  Saviour  gave  his  ap- 
proval to  this  aspect  of  the  social  life  of  Judaea,  in 


FOOD  63 

his  presence  at  their  feasts,  his  suggesting  the 
finest  way  of  keeping  them,  and  his  use  of  them  in 
his  parables  as  symbols  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
So  in  the  second  great  sacrament  of  the  church,  he 
bids  his  people  come  together  for  a  social  feast, 
and  every  direction  he  gives  with  regard  to  its 
proper  observance  is  addressed  to  them  in 
the  plural.  *Take,  eat  .  .  .  Do  this  in  re- 
membrance of  me  .  .  .  Drink  ye  all  of  it." 
He  speaks  to  them  as  a  Christian  congregation, 
and  the  apostle  quotes  to  the  congregation  in 
Corinth  those  very  directions,  as  applying  to  them 
also.  Not  one  person  present  at  the  supper  is 
treated  as  having  no  share  or  interest  in  it,  and 
its  observance  by  one  or  two  communicants  in  the 
presence  of  a  congregation  is  a  palpable  subver- 
sion of  its  meaning  and  purpose. 

To  eat  with  any  one  implies  good  feeling 
toward  him,  according  to  the  usage  of  the  East, 
in  which  the  Bible  was  written.  The  Psalmist 
(  Psalm  xli :  9) ,  makes  his  complaint : — 

Yea,  mine  own  familiar  friend,  in  whom  I  trusted, 

Who  did  eat  of  my  bread, 

Hath  lifted  up  his  heel  against  me. 

Especially  the  eastern  host  shows  a  marked  good 
will  by  singling  out  a  guest,  to  whom  he  will  give 
some  favorite  morsel.     So  our  Lord  did  with 


64  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Judas,  giving  him  the  sop  which  he  had  dipped  in 
the  dish;  but  on  his  receiving  it,  "Satan  entered 
into  him." 

Both  these  points  are  applicable  to  the  Lord's 
Supper.  It  is  a  social  feast,  to  be  observed  by 
all  the  Christians  present,  and  not  by  a  few.  It  is 
a  feast  of  charity,  to  which  we  are  to  come  in 
good  will  to  all  men,  and  especially  those  who  sit 
at  meat  with  us.  It  is  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  he 
is  present  as  the  host;  and  we,  in  accepting  his 
invitation,  profess  that  we  believe  him  our  friend, 
and  that  we  are  determined  to  be  his  friends.  He 
is  not  present  "in,  with,  or  under"  the  elements. 
Neither  does  he  confer  in  this  feast  any  grace  or 
benefit  which  he  withholds  at  other  times  and  on 
other  occasions.  The  great  mystery  of  eating  his 
flesh,  and  drinking  his  blood,  is  not  confined  to  the 
sacrament.  It  was  shared  by  myriads  who  lived 
before  his  Incarnation,  as  by  the  Psalmist  king, 
who  wrote : — 

Thou  preparest  a  table  before  me  in  the  presence  of  mine 

enemies : 
Thou  hast  anointed  my  head  with  oil; 
My  cup  runneth  over. 

But  the  sacrament  is  an  occasion  when  the 
Lord  "keeps  tryst"  with  his  people.  He  never  is 
absent  when  the  two  or  three  gather  in  his  name. 


FOOD  6S 

But  he  aims  at  making  us  feel  and  realize  his  be- 
ing with  us  at  this  feast,  and  he  has  chosen  the 
elements  and  the  acts  which  will  aid  us  in  this. 
Sense  weighs  heavily  against  faith  at  other  times, 
even  in  the  worship  of  God.  In  this  service,  it  is 
enlisted  on  the  side  of  faith.  The  bread  and  the  cup 
are  there,  and  we  behold  them,  knowing  that  in 
every  year  since  he  sat  down  with  the  apostles  in 
the  upper  room  in  Jerusalem,  that  bread  has  been 
broken,  and  that  wine  poured  out,  and  that  he 
has  been  present  with  every  company  of  his  peo- 
ple who  have  kept  the  feast,  and  has  blessed  them 
in  their  reception  of  it.  And  that  blessing  has 
been  that,  while  they  ate  of  the  earthly  food,  their 
spirits  were  nourished  by  that  which  came  down 
from  heaven  for  the  life  of  the  world.  Whatever 
they  may  have  added  to  the  feast  as  he  made  it  at 
the  first,  and  whatever  they  may  have  taken  away 
from  it,  if  they  have  kept  the  essentials,  and  have 
looked  to  him  in  faith,  they  have  found  him 
present,  and  have  fed  upon  him. 

His  presence  is  not  in  the  elements  nor  upon 
an  altar,  but  in  the  Christian  congregation.  "I 
am  in  the  midst  of  you.''  So  the  right  posture 
for  the  Christian  minister  is  not  that  which  turns 
him  away  from  the  people,  for  in  so  doing  he  is 
turning  his  back  upon  his  divine  Master,  what- 
ever may  be  the  thing  toward  which  he  is  turning. 


(^  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

The  shekinah,  the  dwelling-place  of  God,  is 
*'with  men,  and  he  shall  dwell  with  them,  and  they 
shall  be  his  peoples,  and  God  himself  shall  be  with 
them,  and  be  their  God." 


V 
TOUCH 


CHAPTER  V 

TOUCH 

"Touch  is  the  sense  which  love  employs/'  It 
means  the  annihilation  of  distance  between  one 
who  loves  and  that  which  he  loves,  so  that  mere 
nearness  is  replaced  by  contact.  Our  sense  of  the 
significance  of  touch  finds  expression  in  such 
phrases  as  "getting  into  touch/'  or  "living  in 
touch"  with  people.  They  stand  for  sympathetic 
contact,  the  sympathy  which  seeks  contact,  and 
does  not  keep  others  "at  arm's  length."  Children 
learn  it  in  their  mothers'  laps,  and  are  never  con- 
tent to  be  merely  near  those  they  love  without 
actually  touching  them. 

The  Old  Testament  uses  the  word  "touch" 
mostly  in  an  adverse  sense.  It  stands  for  an 
aggression  of  an  enemy  rather  than  the  approach 
of  a  friend.  It  occurs  in  the  many  prohibitions  of 
contact  with  unclean  things  and  persons.  It  is 
one  of  the  forbidding  terms  of  the  Mosaic  law. 
When  the  apostle  rebukes  those  who  would  con- 
vert Christianity  into  a  sort  of  Judaism,  he 
charges  them  with  setting  up  ordinances,  "Handle 
not,  nor  taste,  nor  touch"    (Colossians  ii:2i). 

69 


70  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

The  only  favorable  sense  the  word  has  in  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  is  where  one  in  authority 
touches  an  inferior  to  confer  power.  So  in 
Isaiah's  vision  in  the  temple,  one  of  the  seraphim 
flew  to  the  prophet,  and  touched  his  mouth  with  a 
live  coal  from  the  altar.  Similarly,  Jeremiah  tells 
us  that  ** Jehovah  put  forth  his  hand,  and  touched 
my  mouth;  and  Jehovah  said  unto  me.  Behold,  I 
have  put  my  words  in  thy  mouth."  So  Daniel 
says  of  Gabriel,  that  "he  touched  me,  and  set  me 
upright.  And  he  said.  Behold,  I  will  make  thee 
know  what  shall  be  in  the  latter  time  of  the  in- 
dignation." 

The  spirit  of  the  new  covenant  is  that  of  near- 
ness, while  that  of  the  old  was  that  of  distance. 
The  latter  laid  its  emphasis  upon  the  separateness 
of  God  and  man,  that  it  might  guard  the  elect 
people  from  idolatry,  and  from  the  unseemly 
familiarity  with  God  which  leads  to  idolatry  and 
even  worse  things.*     Its  lesson  was  the  awfulness 

*  There  is  permanent  need  of  both  modes  of  the  divine 
disclosure.  Through  our  human  frailty  we  are  liable  to 
lose  sight  of  the  greatness  of  God,  in  the  sense  of  his 
nearness  and  his  helpfulness.  It  has  been  remarked  of 
the  Japanese  converts  to  Christianity  that  they  are  too  apt 
to  think  of  God  simply  in  relation  to  their  own  needs,  and 
with  too  little  awe  of  his  divine  majesty.  But,  as  Mr. 
Jowett  of  Birmingham  says,  it  is  only  through  communion 
with  a  great  God  that  men  become  great  Christians.    Rev- 


TOUCH  71 

and  the  transcendence  of  God;  and  that  truth 
must  be  learned  before  the  world  was  prepared  to 
enter  the  next  stage  of  its  education,  and  learn  of 
his  immanence  and  his  nearness. 

I.  The  Incarnation  opens  the  new  stage,  and 
its  symbol  is  the  touch  by  which  the  Son  of  God 
expresses  his  love  to  men.  He  "lived  in  touch" 
with  those  he  came  to  save.  He  got  as  near  to 
them  as  possible,  although  this  shocked  many  who 
cherished  the  spirit  of  separation,  from  which  the 
Pharisees  took  their  sectarian  name.  They  mur- 
mured, saying,  "This  man  receiveth  sinners,  and 
eateth  with  them."  They  said  in  Jericho,  "He  is 
gone  in  to  lodge  with  a  man  that  is  a  sinner."  The 
Pharisee,  in  whose  house  the  sinful  woman 
washed  his  feet  with  her  tears,  said  to  himself, 
"This  man,  if  he  were  a  prophet,  would  have  per- 
ceived who  and  what  manner  of  woman  this  is  that 
toucheth    him,    that    she    is    a    sinner."     They 

erence  lies  at  the  foundation  of  a  godly  character,  and  the 
lack  of  it  is  one  of  the  sins  of  our  time.  It  is  of  reverence 
(theosebcia)  that  the  apostle  writes  that  it  "is  profitable 
for  all  things,  having  promise  of  the  life  which  now  is, 
and  of  that  which  is  to  come."  The  word  is  not  found 
in  any  of  his  earlier  epistles,  but  it  occurs  nine  times  in 
the  first  to  Timothy,  and  once  in  the  second,  and  in  that 
to  Titus.  Did  this  enrichment  of  his  vocabulary  grow  out 
of  experiences  among  his  converts,  such  as  are  recorded 
about  the  new  Christians  of  Japan? 


72  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

thought  he  was  breaking  down  the  distinction 
between  good  and  bad  among  men,  by  failing  to 
keep  the  bad  "at  arm's  length,"  as  they  did.  They 
even  suspected  his  own  holiness  in  seeing  the  com- 
pany he  kept,  and  applied  to  him  such  proverbs  as 
"Touch  pitch  and  be  defiled;"  "Birds  of  a  feather 
flock  together."  Nor  is  it  clear  that  we  have  the 
right  to  cast  stones  at  them,  for  what  would  we 
have  felt  when  we  saw  him  accepting  invitations 
from  men  whose  occupations  we  thought  dis- 
graceful and  immoral,  and  sitting  at  meat  with 
men  and  women  whose  characters  were  un- 
questionably bad?  Would  we  not  be  afraid  of 
compromising  our  reputations  if  we  did  so? 
Would  we  not  talk  of  lowering  the  truth,  or  of 
effacing  the  line  of  distinction  between  us  and  the 
world?  But  he  let  nothing  stand  between  him- 
self and  those  he  was  seeking  to  save. 

II.  In  the  simplest  and  most  literal  way  he 
ministered  by  his  touch  to  human  needs.  When 
Simon's  wife's  mother  lay  sick  of  a  great  fever, 
"he  came  and  took  her  by  the  hand,  and  raised 
her  up;  and  the  fever  left  her"  (Mark  i: 
31).  When  he  came  to  the  house  of  Jairus,  the 
ruler  of  the  synagogue,  he  stopped  the  noisy 
lamentations  over  the  dead  girl,  and  "taking  the 
child  by  the  hand,  he  saith  unto  her,  Talitha  cumi 
.  .  .  Damsel,    I    say    unto    thee.    Arise.      And 


TOUCH  73 

Straightway  the  damsel  rose  up,  and  walked" 
(Mark  v:  41,  42).  As  he  left  the  house  of 
Jairus,  two  blind  men  besought  him  to  heal  them. 
**Then  touched  he  their  eyes,  saying.  According 
to  your  faith  be  it  done  unto  you.  And  their  eyes 
were  opened"  (Matthew  ix:29).  When  they 
brought  him  a  deaf  and  dumb  man  in  the  coasts  of 
Decapolis,  *'he  took  him  aside  from  the  multitude 
privately,  and  put  his  fingers  into  his  ears  .  .  . 
and  touched  his  tongue  .  .  .  and  saith  unto  hnn, 
Ephphatha,  that  is.  Be  opened.  And  his  ears 
were  opened  and  the  bound  of  his  tongue  was 
loosed,  and  he  spake  plain"  (Mark  vii:  32-35). 
At  Bethsaida,  a  blind  man  was  brought  to  him, 
"and  when  he  had  spit  on  his  eyes,  he  laid  his 
hands  upon  him,"  and  gave  him  sight  ( Mark  viii : 
23).  As  he  came  down  from  the  Transfigura- 
tion, they  brought  him  the  demoniac  boy,  for 
whom  his  disciples  could  do  nothing,  and  the  evil 
spirit  rent  the  boy  until  "the  more  part  said.  He 
is  dead.  And  Jesus  took  him  by  the  hand,  and 
raised  him  up;  and  he  arose"  (Mark  ix:  26,  27). 
When  Peter  smote  off  the  ear  of  Malchus,  serv- 
ant to  the  high  priest,  Jesus  "touched  his  ear, 
and  healed  him"  (Luke  xxii:5i). 

In  none  of  these  cases,  so  far  as  man  can  judge, 
was  it  necessary  for  him  to  touch  those  he  healed. 
He  did  fully  as  much  in  other  cases,  where  he  did 


74  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

not  use  his  hands  in  this  way,  and  in  some  cases 
he  healed  those  who  were  at  a  distance  (Matthew 
viii :  13).  It  seems  to  have  been  as  the  expression 
of  his  sympathy  with  the  sufferers  that  he  touched 
them,  just  as  we  lay  our  hands  on  the  shoulders 
of  our  friends  when  we  want  to  speak  to  them  out 
of  our  hearts. 

Especially  noteworthy  are  two  cases,  in  which 
he  incurred  ceremonial  defilement  by  this  use  of 
his  hands.  One  is  that  of  the  son  of  the  widow  of 
Nain :  "He  came  nigh  and  touched  the  bier"  (Luke 
vii:  14),  although  he  thus  insured  legal  defilement 
(Numbers  xix:  11),  for  having  to  do  with  a 
dead  body.  More  striking  is  his  healing  of  the 
leper,  as  he  came  down  from  the  mountain  of  the 
great  sermon:  "He  stretched  forth  his  hand, 
and  touched  him'*  (Matthew  viii  13),  although 
the  law  of  Moses  shut  the  leper  out  from  all  con- 
tact with  other  men  (Leviticus  xiii:45),  ^^^  ^^ 
break  this  law  was  to  incur  uncleanness.  Never 
shall  I  forget  hearing  Dr.  Alexander  Maclaren 
preach  on  this  miracle :  "Why  did  He  touch  him, 
even  before  he  healed  him?  Because  he  saw 
that  the  first  need  of  that  poor  soul,  shut  off  for 
years  from  his  kind,  was  sympathy — that,  even 
before  healing.  He  must  have  been  a  loathsome 
sight,  and  probably  more  so  to  our  Lord's  senses 
than  to  those  of  other  men.     But  he  put  forth  his 


TOUCH  75 

hand  and  touched  him,  as  the  expression  of  his 
pity  and  sympathy.  And  was  not  that  what  he 
did  in  the  Incarnation  itself,  drawing  near  to  us  in 
our  utter  defilement,  taking  hold  of  us,  as  he  did 
of  that  poor  leper,  putting  forth  that  gracious  and 
mighty  hand  to  touch  us  ?" 

III.  This  view  is  confirmed  by  his  use  of  his 
hands  for  other  gracious  purposes  than  healing. 
When  the  mothers  brought  the  little  children  to 
him,  ''he  took  them  in  his  arms,  and  blessed  them, 
laying  his  hands  upon  them"  (Mark  x:  i6).  It 
was  a  visible  expression  of  that  interest  in  child- 
hood, and  love  of  children,  which  is  notable  in  the 
gospel  story.  His  every  word  about  them,  except 
perhaps  his  rebuking  parable  about  the  children 
who  would  not  play  at  either  wedding  or  funeral 
(Matthew  xi:  17),  is  one  of  joyful  affection. 

Along  with  this  in  spiritual  beauty  is  the  scene 
in  the  upper  room,  where  he  ate  the  passover  with 
his  disciples.  When  they  came  in,  there  were 
the  ewer  full  of  water,  the  towel,  and  the  basin.  It 
was  some  one's  work  to  wash  the  feet  of  the  com- 
pany from  the  dust  of  the  highway,  if  they  were 
to  enjoy  the  feast  without  distraction;  but  none 
of  them  would.  One  looked  up  at  the  ceiling, 
and  another  out  of  the  window,  pretending  they 
did  not  see  the  ewer  and  the  basin.  They  made 
for  their  places  at  the  table,  each  of  them  thinking 


'](i  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

it  beneath  his  dignity  to  stoop  to  such  a  service, 
and  finding  the  best  reasons  why  some  other  of 
the  Twelve  should  do  it.  Then  the  Master  arose, 
poured  the  water  into  the  basin,  and  girded  him- 
self with  the  towel,  and  stooped  to  serve  them 
with  the  loving  touch  of  a  cleansing  hand.  It 
was  the  truest  humility,  which  means  getting 
down  to  the  ground  (humus)  because  God  has 
something  for  one  to  do  there  that  cannot  be  done 
anywhere  else. 

IV.  As  love  evokes  love  in  return,  so  our 
Lord's  touch  encouraged  others  to  touch  him.  In 
Galilee,  "wheresoever  he  entered,  into  villages,  or 
cities,  or  into  the  country,  they  laid  the  sick  in  the 
market-places,  and  besought  him  that  they  might 
touch  if  it  were  but  the  border  of  his  garment :  and 
as  many  as  touched  him  were  made  whole"  (Mark 
vi:56;  Matthew  xiv:36).  An  outstanding  in- 
stance of  this  is  the  woman  who  came  behind,  him 
in  the  throng  and  touched  the  hem  of  his  garment, 
and  was  healed  of  the  disease  which  had  been 
weakening  and  impoverishing  her  for  twelve 
years.  But  it  was  out  of  himself,  and  not  out  of 
the  garment,  that  the  power  had  passed  which 
wrought  the  cure.  The  hand  got  nothing,  and 
the  garment  gave  nothing,  but  her  faith  had 
brought  her  into  contact  with  the  Saviour,  and 
thus  made  her  whole. 


TOUCH  n 

Apart  from  demands  upon  his  power  to  heal, 
his  friends  show  their  affection  by  touching  him. 
The  woman  which  was  a  sinner  breaks  through 
the  bonds  of  pharisaic  propriety  and  follows  him 
into  the  house  of  Simon,  the  Pharisee,  "and  stand- 
ing behind  at  his  feet,  weeping,  she  began  to  wet 
his  feet  with  her  tears,  and  wiped  them  with 
the  hair  of  her  head,  and  kissed  his  feet"  (Luke 
vii:38).  Dr.  Melanchthon  W.  Stryker  suggests 
that  there  is  as  much  of  affection  as  of  doubt  in  the 
demand  of  the  apostle  Thomas,  "Except  I  shall 
see  in  his  hands  the  print  of  the  nails,  and  put  my 
finger  into  the  print  of  the  nails,  and  put  my  hand 
into  his  side,  I  will  not  believe"  (John  xx:25). 
He  thinks  this  was  an  expression  of  his  sincere 
love  for  the  Master,  which  asked  for  the  touch  that 
is  more  intimate  than  sight.  May  we  not  say 
that  the  substance  of  the  speech  shows  doubt,  but 
the  form  of  it  affection?  "That  disciple,  whom 
Jesus  loved"  especially,  is  the  evangelist  who  re- 
cords for  us  the  saying  of  Thomas,  and  it  recalls 
his  own  language  in  the  opening  words  of  his 
great  epistle :  "That  which  was  from  the  begin- 
ning, that  which  we  have  heard,  that  which  we 
have  seen  with  our  eyes,  that  which  we  beheld, 
and  our  hands  handled,  concerning  the  Word 
of  life  .  .  .  declare  we  unto  you  also,  that  ye 
also  may  have  fellowship  with  us:  yea,  and  our 


78  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

fellowship  is  with  the  Father,  and  with  his  Son 
Jesus  Christ." 

V.  When  our  Lord  is  about  to  pass  from  the 
region  of  sense  to  that  of  faith,  he  assures  his  peo- 
ple that  they  are  to  lose  nothing  by  the  change. 
He  will  still  be  "in  touch  with  them."  The 
Comforter  is  not  to  take  his  place,  but  to  take 
what  is  his  and  make  it  known  to  them.  What 
otherwise  might  have  been  mere  facts  of  history 
in  their  memories,  are  to  become  the  present,  liv- 
ing truths  of  their  Christian  experience,  and  not 
theirs  only,  but  of  all  who  believe  on  him  to  the 
end  of  time.  For  the  Spirit's  work  is  to  make 
Jesus  Christ  more  real  to  us  than  he  was  to  those 
who  saw  his  works  and  heard  him  speak. 
Through  his  ministry,  those  years  of  our  Lord's 
ministry,  with  his  sacrificial  death  and  triumphant 
resurrection,  become  a  part  of  all  true  Christians' 
lives. 

The  gospel  calls  upon  us  to  "live  in  touch"  with 
the  God  whom  Jesus  reveals  as  his  Father  and 
ours.  We  are  not  called  to  submission  to  a  dis- 
tant and  unlovable  deity,  like  the  Allah  of  the 
Moslem ;  nor  to  a  chilly  adoration  of  a  philosophic 
absolute,  who  can  be  described  only  in  negative 
terms;  nor  to  the  worship  of  an  infinite  rabbi, 
such  as  the  later  Jewish  theology  presents.  We 
are  brought  to  a  living  communion  with  a  gracious 


TOUCH  79 

Friend  and  Father,  whose  love  to  us  is  reflected 
in  the  affection  of  all  who  have  been  dearest  and 
kindest  to  us  among  men.  He  is  nearer  to  us 
than  these  could  be,  nearer  than  our  very  selves. 
As  F.  W.  Faber  says,  '*God  never  is  so  far  off  as 
only  to  be  near."  No  language  that  does  not  break 
the  bounds  of  our  finite  personality  is  too  strong 
to  express  our  closeness  to  him  "in  him  we 
live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being." 

It  is  the  Incarnation  which  makes  this  intel- 
ligible to  us.  The  Old  Testament  presents  God 
and  man  in  contrast  and  antithesis,  as  many 
Christians  still  speak  of  them,  though  not  in 
Christian  fashion.  Such  language  was  necessary 
in  the  lower  classes  of  God's  great  school,  because 
any  other  would  have  led  men  to  error  and  idol- 
atry. It  is  not  without  its  uses  still,  when  the 
thought  of  the  nearness  of  God  obscures  his 
awfulness  to  us.  But  God  after  speakuig  ''to 
the  fathers  in  the  prophets  in  many  parts  and  in 
many  manners,  hath  in  the  end  of  the  day^ 
spoken  unto  us  in  his  Son"  (Hebrews  i:  i,  2) 
fully  and  clearly;  and  that  not  so  much  by  what 
the  Son  said,  as  by  what  the  Son  is.  In  him  our 
human  nature  is  exhibited  in  its  true  character, 
that  which  was  in  the  thought  of  God  when  he 
said,  "Let  us  make  man  in  our  own  image."  Our 
humanity  stands  up  in  Jesus  Christ,  a  thing  pure. 


8o  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

spotless,  and  splendid;  and  it  is  in  him  that  we 
are  to  see  and  estimate  it,  and  to  be  changed  to 
that  image  by  the  vision  and  the  fellowship  (II 
Corinthians  iii:i8).  We  are  to  regard  as  in- 
human all  that  falls  below  "the  measure  of  the 
stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ."  It  is  not  true 
that  "to  err  is  human;"  nor  should  we  speak  of 
"the  infirmities  of  human  nature,"  but  with 
Paul,  of  the  infirmity  of  our  flesh ;  that  is,  of  the 
perversion  of  our  human  nature  by  sin. 

VI.  Working  "in  touch"  is  the  method  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Jesus  shrank  from  no  con- 
tact with  the  men  he  sought  to  save,  although  he 
must  have  felt  their  degradation  as  we  never  can 
feel  it.  There  was  no  "submerged  tenth"  too 
deeply  sunk  for  him  to  follow  it  into  the  depths, 
that  he  might  lift  it  up  to  goodness  and  forgive- 
ness. Men  have  tried  to  do  his  work  while  stand- 
ing afar  from  those  they  sought  to  benefit ;  but  to 
little  result.  The  greatest  who  have  followed  in 
his  footsteps,  have  followed  him  in  this  as  in  other 
things.  The  Moravians  who  offered  to  become 
slaves,  that  they  might  be  allowed  to  reach  the 
negro  slaves  in  the  West  Indies,  and  who  made 
their  abode  among  the  lepers,  knowing  what  that 
must  end  in,  that  they  might  reach  that  class, 
were  illustrations  of  his  method,  and  of  his  un- 
resting pity  for  lost  men. 


TOUCH  8i 

Our  own  generation  has  seen  a  notable  amount 
of  return  to  his  method,  even  among  those  who 
are  not  working  in  his  name.  Social  reformers 
are  discovering  that  they  can  do  little  good  for 
people  of  any  sort,  while  they  hold  them  at  arm's 
length.  "I  have  learned,"  says  a  worker  in  one 
of  the  University  settlements,  "that  you  can  get 
access  to  the  people  who  need  you  only  by  living 
with  them.  They  will  not  come  to  you ;  but  Jew 
and  Gentile  will  make  you  welcome  if  you  come  to 
them.  Our  meetings  for  their  benefit  are  a 
failure.  Our  personal  intercourse  with  them, 
man  to  man,  has  been  promising  great  good.  It 
is  of  no  use  to  come  once  or  twice  to  see  them; 
you  must  live  with  them,  if  you  are  to  do  anything 
for  them." 

So  Thomas  Chalmers  gave  up  his  wealthy  par- 
ish in  Glasgow,  and  took  charge  of  one  in  the 
"wynds,"  that  he  might  get  near  to  the  poor,  and 
find  some  way  of  relieving  their  wants  without 
pauperizing  them  by  either  public  and  unloving 
assistance,  or  heedless  giving!  So  Caroline  Hill 
took  charge  of  the  wretched  court  in  East  Lon- 
don, which  rarely  had  missed  mention  for  a  day 
in  the  police  reports,  and  by  living  among  its 
people  was  able  to  change  it  into  a  place  of 
sobriety,  thrift,  and  honesty.  "Not  alms  but  a 
friend,"  is  the  motto  of  the  new  charity,  which 


82  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Chalmers  began,  and  which  Miss  Hill  revived. 
The  man  or  woman  who  would  help  the  poor  must 
give  himself  to  them.  Anything  short  of  that  is 
cheap,  and  likely  to  be  mischievous.  The  touch 
of  a  loving  hand  may  be  worth  more  than  all  the 
"gifts  with  which  you  may  fill  it. 

We  are  learning  to  cease  patronage  of  the  poor, 
and  to  follow  Jesus  Christ  in  his  ministry  of  touch 
and  sympathy.  The  love  which  does  not  shrink 
from  contact  with  what  often  must  be  re- 
pulsive, is  that  which  follows  in  his  foot- 
steps, and  interprets  him  to  men.  But 
the  love  must  be  there.  The  loveless  gift,  as 
Chalmers  said,  degrades  the  recipient.  Nor  is 
anything  more  repulsive  to  the  poor  than  to  be 
approached  with  insincere  phrases,  and  shallow 
professions  of  interest  in  them  and  their  needs. 
No  eyes  are  keener  than  those  which  have  been 
sharpened  by  want,  and  they  have  learned  to  meet 
insincerity  with  insincerity.  None  who  approach 
them  in  the  spirit  of  the  divine  Master  need  fear 
being  misconstrued  or  repelled. 


VI 
SOWING  AND  REAPING 


CHAPTER  VI 

SOWING  AND  REAPING 

It  was  not  until  the  Hebrew  people  came  into 
possession  of  the  land  promised  to  their  fathers, 
that  they  were  able  to  take  up  the  tillage  of  the 
soil  as  the  means  of  their  support.  From  Abra- 
ham to  Joshua,  a  period  of  at  least  five  centuries, 
they  were  exclusively  shepherds,  and  generally 
without  any  settled  habitation.  The  conquest  of 
Palestine  enabled  them  to  become  farmers,  and 
lay  aside  their  nomadic  habits.  The  change  was 
much  greater  than  appears  on  the  surface  of 
things.  The  life  of  the  shepherd  was  one  of  hard- 
ship and  exposure,  through  want  of  homes  and 
their  equipment.  It  was  one  of  constant  peril,  as 
it  admitted  of  no  permanent  defense  against 
marauders.  It  was  a  life  of  great  monotony, 
without  interruption  of  routine  except  at  lambing 
and  shearing  time.  It  was  commonly  a  life  of 
painful  solitude,  and  thus  exposed  to  the  melan- 
choly which  isolation  from  other  men  breeds. 

The  life  of  the  ancient  farmer  was  not  that  of 
a  man  living  in  a  farmhouse  apart,  but  that  of  a 
resident  in  a  walled  city,  who  went  out  to  till  his 

85 


86  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

fields.  It  was  therefore  more  wholesome  for  the 
mind,  and  of  greater  safety,  as  well  as  brightened 
by  closer  social  association.  The  work  was  more 
varied,  and  the  rest  more  cheerful.  Time  could 
be  found  for  festivals,  and  especially  for  a  weekly 
Sabbath,  such  as  the  shepherd  never  knew,  be- 
cause his  work  must  be  the  same  for  every  day  of 
the  week.  Hence  the  silence  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  to  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath  before 
Moses  and  the  giving  of  the  law.  The  more 
strenuous  employments  of  the  new  age  and  its 
more  rapid  societary  movement  demanded  the 
alternations  of  rest;  and  this  need  has  grown 
greater  with  every  century  since  that  time. 

By  becoming  farmers,  the  Hebrew  people  moved 
to  a  higher  level  of  the  world's  social  develop- 
ment, while  those  peoples  that  did  not  make  the 
change  remained  on  a  lower.  The  difference 
grew  originally  out  of  a  higher  faith  in  the  fixed 
laws  which  govern  the  world,  and  especially  the 
law  that  "whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he 
also  reap."  It  is  difficult  for  us,  after  millen- 
niums of  uniform  experience,  to  realize  the  un- 
certainty with  which  primitive  man  must  have 
faced  this  problem  of  sowing  and  reaping.  He 
would  not  have  found  it  incredible,  if  told  by  any 
one  claiming  knowledge  of  the  matter,  that  the 
sowing  of  wheat  would  produce  a  crop  of  spelt  or 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  87 

tares,  or  no  crop  whatever.  The  races  which 
found  it  hard  to  reach  any  certainty,  unless 
driven  on  by  necessity,  clung  to  more  palpable 
ways  of  getting  their  food  by  hunting  and  fish- 
ing, while  others  got  as  far  as  keeping  sheep  or 
cattle.  In  the  Bible  story,  Esau  is  the  type  of  the 
distrustful  races;  while  Jacob,  with  his  crop  of 
red  lentils,  stands  for  those  which  had  courage  to 
risk  their  seed  in  sowing,  in  the  faith  that  the  har- 
vest would  be  of  the  same  kind,  and  abundant 
enough  to  repay  the  risk. 

It  is  in  the  Zend-Avesta,  the  sacred  book  of  the 
ancient  Persians,  that  the  antagonism  of  the  two 
kinds  of  peoples  comes  out  most  clearly.  The 
Persian  was  a  tiller  of  the  soil,  and  regarded  it  as 
a  sacred  thing,  not  to  be  profaned  by  the  burial  of 
corpses  in  it,  while  it  repaid  this  reverence  by  the 
gifts  of  the  harvest.  Their  savage  neighbors, 
the  Turanians,  to  the  north  of  Persia,  despised 
agriculture,  and  the  Zend-Avesta  makes  the  con- 
trast between  the  two  modes  of  life  almost  identi- 
cal with  the  distinction  between  good  and  bad 
men.  The  Turanian  justified  this  by  his  readi- 
ness to  plunder  the  harvest-fields  of  his  indus- 
trious neighbors.  A  similar  situation  existed  in 
America  before  the  Spanish  conquests.  The  peo- 
ple of  the  warmer  parts  of  the  continent  had  been 
driven  by  necessity  to  the  cultivation  of  maize  and 


88  NATURE.  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

manioc.  Their  harvests  were  plundered  by  the 
more  savage  tribes  to  the  north,  who  also  killed  or 
enslaved  the  cultivators.  The  Navajos  named  the 
months  of  their  calendar  from  the  animal  they 
most  hunted  in  each,  and  one  was  "Mexican 
month." 

In  the  long  run,  the  tillers  of  the  soil  have  come 
to  the  front  as  the  masters  of  the  world,  because 
of  their  wealth,  their  social  coherence,  and  their 
trained  intelligence.  The  taproot  of  their  suc- 
cess was  their  faith  in  the  beneficent  order  which 
controls  the  world.  They  have  learned  also  that 
the  same  great  law  of  the  harvest  pervades  the 
whole  of  human  life.  The  Greek  poet  Hesiod, 
the  Latin  orator  Cicero,  and  the  Hebrew  apostle 
Paul  express  this  in  almost  identical  terms.  They 
apply  to  the  moral  life  of  men  the  saying,  "A  man 
reaps  as  he  sows,"  meaning  that  we  here  touch  a 
natural  law,  which  has  its  exact  parallel  in  the 
life  of  man  as  a  responsible  being. 

The  Scriptures  recognize  a  double  cor- 
respondence here.  The  Old  Testament,  for  the 
most  part,  finds  this  in  the  reaping  of  what  we 
sow  in  the  conduct  of  our  lives.  The  New  Testa- 
ment applies  the  analogy  more  commonly  to  the 
labors  of  our  Master  and  his  servants  for  the  wel- 
fare of  mankind.  Let  us  look  at  some  of  the  as- 
pects of  this  great  parable. 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  89 

I.  God  and  man  work  together  in  the  tillage 
of  the  soil,  and  the  ingathering  of  the  harvest. 
Man  avails  himself  of  God's  law  of  increase,  by 
which  the  scanty  seed  grows  into  the  abundant 
harvest,  supplying  seed  to  the  sower  and  bread  to 
the  eater.  He  casts  himself  upon  the  established 
order  of  God  in  the  creation,  when  he  risks  his 
seed  in  the  earth.  However  well  he  may  plant 
it  and  tend  it,  he  cannot  of  himself  make  one  grain 
germinate,  or  bring  forth  one  blade  out  of  the 
earth,  as  Luther  says.  Along  with  his  faith 
goes  hope.  He  looks  to  see  sunshine  and  rainfall 
given  in  due  measure,  also  as  part  of  God's  order. 

We  lose  a  right  sense  of  this  through  the  blunt- 
ness  of  our  perceptions.  We  have  allowed  our- 
selves to  grow  used  to  the  wonder  of  God's  work- 
ing in  these  common  things,  until  all  wonder  has 
ceased  out  of  the  world  for  us.  We  think  of  na- 
ture as  a  big  piece  of  machinery,  which  works 
apart  from  the  presence  and  will  of  its  Creator. 
So  we  find  it  hard  to  pray,  as  his  Son  bids  us, 
"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread."  We  have 
allowed  the  constancy  of  its  coming  to  hide  God's 
hand  in  the  giving.  His  Son,  however,  never 
took  a  piece  of  bread  into  his  hands  without  bless- 
ing the  Father  who  gave  it.  There  must  have 
been  something  distinctive  in  his  way  of  doing 
this.     The  two  disciples  did  not  recognize  him 


90  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

during  their  walk  of  five  miles  with  him  to 
Emmaus,  but  knew  him  at  once  when  he  "took  the 
bread  and  blessed;  and  breaking  it  he  gave  to 
them."  Must  he  not  have  taken  it  as  though  it 
came  right  out  of  his  Father's  hand,  as  we  also 
should  do? 

Even  the  heathen  acknowledge  this  truth  in 
their  way.  Every  pantheon  had  a  deity  of  the 
harvest,  who  was  worshiped  while  the  crops  were 
growing,  and  especially  when  they  were  gathered. 
The  only  native  American  idol  which  has  sur- 
vived the  zeal  of  the  Christian  missionaries  repre- 
sents the  Mexican  goddess  of  the  maize  plant,  and 
in  her  honor  more  festivals  were  held  than  for  any 
other.  The  apostle  therefore  appealed  to  a  uni- 
versal belief,  when  he  told  the  heathen  people  of 
Lystra  that  the  "living  God,  who  made  the  heaven 
and  the  earth  and  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is 
.  .  .  left  not  himself  without  witness,  in  that 
he  did  good  and  gave  you  from  heaven  rains  and 
fruitful  seasons,  filling  your  hearts  with  food  and 
gladness."  It  is  upon  this  truth  that  our  coun- 
try bases  her  observance  of  Thanksgiving  day, 
when  the  whole  nation  acknowledges  God  as  the 
giver  of  our  harvests. 

When  we  pass  from  the  natural  to  the  spiritual 
order,  we  find  this  fact  of  man's  dependence  upon 
God  not  less  evident.     We  find  it  so,  as  the  Old 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  91 

Testament  teaches,  in  the  conduct  of  our  Hves. 
We  are  in  the  presence  of  moral  laws  as  distinct 
as  that  by  which  the  seed  germinates  "after  its 
kind,"  and  bears  its  own  fruit. 

We  all,  indeed,  are  sowing  seed  of  some  sort, 
and  thus  submitting  our  lives  to  the  operation  of 
the  law  of  growth ;  and  we  all  will  have  a  harvest 
of  some  sort.  It  may  be  a  bad  one.  We  may 
"plow  iniquity,  and  sow  trouble,"  and  "reap  the 
same"  (Job  iv :  8)  ;  or  "sow  iniquity  and  reap 
calamity"  (Proverbs  xxii :  8) ;  or  "sow  the  wind" 
and  "reap  the  whirlwind"  (Hosea  viii:/).  But 
this  is  more  often  and  properly  the  neglect  of  till- 
age, which  leaves  the  weeds  of  evil  to  spring  up 
and  possess  the  soil.  It  is  not  the  conduct  of  life, 
but  throwing  the  reins  on  the  neck  of  our  animal 
passions  and  our  baser  instincts,  and  bidding 
them  take  us  where  they  will. 

All  real  conduct  of  life  is  a  laying  hold  of 
divine  help,  and  working  with  God.  It  starts 
from  him,  and  not  from  ourselves.  We  are  in- 
deed to  work  out  our  own  salvation  with  fear 
and  trembling,  because  he  has  worked  it  in,  be- 
cause he  worketh  in  us  to  will  and  to  work,  for 
his  good  pleasure.  There  can  be  no  good  in  us, 
either  in  germ  or  in  fruition,  which  is  not  from 
him.  It  is  he  who  implants  in  our  hearts  that 
incorruptible    seed,    which    liveth    and    abideth, 


92  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

and  which  makes  us  fruitful  in  the  virtues  and 
the  activities  of  a  Christian  Hfe.  Here  it  is  that 
Qiristianity  parts  company  from  the  paganism 
even  of  Hesiod  and  Cicero.  The  latter,  in  his 
dialogue  "On  the  Nature  of  the  Gods,"  makes  one 
of  the  speakers  remark  that  men  thank  the  gods 
for  all  sorts  of  external  benefits — for  prosperity, 
for  safety  from  perils,  for  fair  children,  and  beau- 
tiful houses;  but  that  no  one  ever  thanks  the 
gods  that  he  is  virtuous,  honest,  chaste,  generous. 
And  quite  rightly,  he  thinks,  since  a  man  owes 
these  to  himself.  Christians  know  that  it  is  just 
for  these  that  they  are  most  bound  to  give  God 
thanks. 

We  find  this  equally  true,  as  the  New  Testa- 
ment teaches  it,  in  the  spiritual  harvest  which  is 
gathered  from  efforts  to  do  good  to  men.  The 
greatest  and  most  fruitful  workers  have  been 
those  who  felt  most  clearly  their  dependence  upon 
God.  *T  planted,"  says  Paul,  "Apollos  watered; 
but  God  gave  the  increase.  So  then  neither  is 
he  that  planteth  anything,  neither  he  that  water- 
eth;  but  God  that  giveth  the  increase."  Man's 
part,  he  says  is  foolishness — ''the  foolishness  of 
preaching"  by  which  God  "is  pleased  to  save  them 
that  believe." 

It  is  indeed  foolishness  to  expect  sinners  to  give 
heed  to  a  message  which  runs  counter  to  all  their 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  93 

natural  inclinations,  humbles  their  pride,  and  calls 
upon  them  to  do  what  is  beyond  their  power.  It 
is  a  mere  waste  of  words  unless  God  be  in  it,  and 
make  men  welcome  what  is  most  distasteful,  and 
enable  them  to  believe  what  is  incredible,  and  to  do 
what  is  impossible  to  flesh  and  blood.  It  is  just 
this  that  makes  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  a 
thing  apart  from  all  other  speech  of  man  to  men. 
It  is  a  message  from  God,  with  the  assurance 
that  a  divine  power  attends  it,  making  it  possible 
for  sinners  to  believe  and  obey  it. 

The  human  instrument,  indeed,  God  will  not 
dispense  with.  "How  shall  they  believe,"  says 
the  apostle,  "in  him  whom  they  have  not  heard? 
and  how  shall  they  hear  without  a  preacher?  and 
how  shall  they  preach,  except  they  be  sent  ?"  God 
has  committed  this  ministry  to  men,  and  not  to 
the  angels,  for  the  good  of  men.  He  draws  us 
"with  cords  of  a  man,  with  bands  of  love" 
(Hosea  xi:4),  in  speaking  to  us  through  the 
heart  and  the  voice  of  a  fellow-man,  just  as  in  the 
Incarnation  he  meets  us  as  one  of  ourselves — 


"So  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 
Saying,  *0  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here ! 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself ! 
Thou  hast  no  power  nor  mayest  conceive  of  mine, 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 
And  thou  must  love  me  who  have  died  for  thee.' " 


94  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Nor  is  the  true  preacher  a  mere  Hfeless  trum- 
pet, through  which  a  message  is  sounded  in  our 
ears.  His  fitness  for  the  work  is  through  the 
training  he  has  had  from  the  Spirit  of  God.  The 
life  of  the  Spirit  in  his  heart  gives  him  an  entire 
assurance  of  the  truth  he  brings,  a  lively  sense  of 
the  need  of  those  he  addresses,  and  a  yearning  love 
to  reach  and  touch  them.  Thus  it  is  made  manifest 
that  "the  foolishness  of  God  is  wiser  than  men." 

11.  The  farmer  proceeds  upon  the  conviction 
that  the  law  of  growth  will  operate  uniformly  in 
every  case  where  the  conditions  are  fairly  favor- 
able. We  as  a  people  risk  hundreds  of  millions 
of  dollars  every  year  upon  that  conviction,  and 
the  labors  of  millions  of  men  besides.  All  this  is 
risked  upon  something  unseen,  intangible,  and 
yet  real.  The  gains  of  the  hunter  and  the  herds- 
man are  much  more  tangible  from  the  outset,  but 
those  of  the  farmer  are  greater.  When  Eu- 
ropean settlement  began,  the  entire  population  of 
our  country  was  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  of 
Indians.  They  had  all  the  resources  of  our  na- 
tional area  at  their  disposal,  but  they  lived  mainly 
by  hunting  and  fishing.  They  suffered  from 
hunger  very  often,  and  died  of  famine  in  many 
years.  We  are  feeding  nearly  ninety  millions  at 
home,  and  we  send  the  food  for  millions  across 
the  Atlantic. 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  95 

The  spiritual  law  of  seedtime  and  harvest  is 
just  as  certain,  but  we  are  far  slower  to  learn  its 
truth.  We  even  fancy  sometimes  that  we  can 
evade  it  by  our  cleverness,  although  we  would  not 
venture  upon  that  with  the  natural  law.  By  no 
sort  of  tillage  would  we  seek  a  crop  of  wheat 
where  we  had  sown  only  spelt  or  rye. 

The  religions  of  the  world  are  in  some  cases 
little  else  than  devices  to  escape  the  law  of  reap- 
ing as  you  have  sown,  by  bribing  the  divine  pow- 
ers to  show  favoritism.  There  are  erroneous 
forms  of  Christian  teaching  or  believing,  which 
have  the  same  purpose.  The  notions  that  some 
ritual  observance,  or  wearing  of  a  scapular,  or 
an  emotional  experience  which  left  the  life  un- 
changed, or  a  rigid  orthodoxy  of  the  head  which 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  heart,  will  serve  as  a 
substitute  for  holy  living,  are  subtle  forms  of  An- 
tinomianism,  which  reappear  in  every  age.  The 
apostle's  doctrine  as  justification  by  faith  without 
the  works  of  the  law,  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  has  been  as  much  abused  in  this  way,  and 
wrested  by  the  ignorant  and  the  unsteadfast  to 
their  own  destruction  (II  Peter  iii:  16),  as  any 
other  part  of  the  Bible.  It  is,  however,  in  this 
very  epistle  that  he  gives  us  the  solemn  warning : 
"Be  not  deceived ;  God  is  not  mocked :  for  what- 
soever a  man  soweth,   that  shall  he  also  reap. 


96  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

For  he  that  soweth  unto  his  own  flesh  shall  of  the 
flesh  reap  corruption;  but  he  that  soweth  unto 
the  Spirit  shall  of  the  Spirit  reap  eternal  life." 
God  'Vill  render  to  every  man  according  to  his 
works"  (Romans  ii :  6).  "Follow  after  peace  with 
all  men,"  says  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  ''and 
the  sanctification  without  which  no  man  shall  see 
the  Lord."  John  saw  the  dead  before  the 
Throne,  "and  they  were  judged  every  man  ac- 
cording to  their  works." 

This  spiritual  law  commends  itself  to  our  judg- 
ments and  our  consciences  in  the  most  forcible 
way.  It  fits  into  all  that  we  know  of  the  universe, 
as  exactly  as  does  the  natural  law  of  gravitation, 
and  we  have  just  as  good  reason  for  acting  upon 
its  truth.  There  is  nothing  that  is  either  fac- 
titious or  arbitrary  about  it.  The  fruits  of  our 
lives  are  the  corresponding  outcome  of  what  we 
have  been  planting  and  sowing  in  the  conduct  of 
our  lives;  and  in  the  nature  of  things  they  can- 
not be  otherwise.  Yet  no  sinner  ever  gathers  his 
armful  or  barnful  of  thistles  and  darnell  and  wild 
mustard  without  grumbling  at  its  not  being 
wheat. 

Even  good  men  fall  short  here,  though  in  a  less 
degree.  Robert  Bruce,  the  great  Scottish 
preacher,  was  an  eminently  good  man.  When 
pressed  to  declare  his  full  belief  that  the  Earl  of 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  97 

Gowrie  had  made  a  treasonable  attempt  on  the 
Hfe  of  King  James,  he  said  they  were  asking  of 
him  a  "persuasion  of  the  fact  which  he  could  not 
get  for  the  articles  of  his  belief."  "What !"  said 
Lord  Kinloss,  "are  you  not  fully  persuaded  of 
the  articles  of  your  belief?"  "Not,  my  lord,  as 
I  should  be.  If  you  and  I  were  both  persuaded 
that  there  were  a  hell,  we  would  do  otherwise  than 
as  we  do."  If  we  felt,  at  every  instant  of  life,  the 
reality  of  the  spiritual  laws  which  govern  life,  we 
would  rise  to  heroic  heights  of  obedience  and  en- 
durance. Then  we  would  be  earning  the  praise 
our  Lord  gives  to  the  pearl-trader,  who  realized 
that  the  one  pearl  was  worth  more  than  all  he 
possessed,  and  who  acted  with  businesslike 
promptness  on  that  knowledge.  And  we  would 
not  be  falling  under  that  sorrowful  rebuke,  that 
the  children  of  this  world  are  wiser  after  their 
sort  than  the  children  of  the  Light.  Those  go 
to  their  object  as  straight  as  the  bird  flies,  while 
these  hesitate,  shilly-shally,  and  compromise. 

III.  This  stern  law  of  reaping  as  we  sow  has 
a  gracious  and  gospel  aspect,  in  respect  to  the 
abundance  of  the  harvest,  whether  natural  or 
spiritual.  Our  Lord  especially  Insists  upon  this. 
He  says  that  the  seed  which  fell  upon  good  ground 
bore  fruit  "thirtyfold,  and  sixtyfold,  and  a  hun- 
dredfold." May  we  not  suppose  that  he  had  been 


08  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

counting  the  gains  in  a  wheat  ear,  and  saw  in  this 
the  beneficence  of  the  law  of  growth,  and  a 
prophecy  of  nature  as  to  the  growth  of  his  king- 
dom? This  natural  multiplication  goes  far  be- 
yond what  we  should  have  expected.  It  is  in- 
crease after  a  divine  measure,  rather  than  the 
human.  Our  Lord  sees  another  example  of  this 
in  the  mustard  plant,  which  grows  from  one  of 
the  tiniest  of  seeds,  but  within  the  year  mounts  up 
into  quite  a  branchy  bush,  the  biggest  of  the  gar- 
den herbs  of  Palestine,  and  affords  rest  and  shel- 
ter for  the  birds.  The  Talmud  quotes  a  Rab 
Simeon,  who  said  he  had  one  in  his  garden  so 
large  that  he  climbed  into  it.  A  third  of  his  illus- 
trations is  the  diffusion  of  the  morsel  of  leaven 
through  the  six  gallons  of  meal,  which  we  now 
know  to  be  another  instance  of  vegetable  expan- 
sion. 

To  the  truth  which  these  illustrate,  he  con- 
stantly returns  in  his  teaching.  He  tells  us  of  the 
surprise  which  awaits  us,  when  we  see  the  great 
results  which  will  oome  from  seemingly  small 
causes.  A  cup  of  cold  water,  if  given  in  the  name 
of  Christ,  or  even  in  that  of  a  disciple,  shall  not 
lose  its  reward.  The  giver  may  forget  it,  but  not 
he.  Whoever  makes  sacrifices  for  Christ's  sake 
and  the  gospel's  "shall  receive  a  hundredfold, 
and    shall    inherit    eternal    life."     He    who    is 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  99 

found  faithful  in  the  handHng  of  five  talents  or 
ten,  shall  be  called  to  bear  rule  over  as  many 
cities.  In  the  day  of  judgment  those  who  minis- 
tered to  the  needs  of  his  hungry,  naked,  sick,  or 
imprisoned  brethren,  will  have  the  same  measure 
of  joy  as  if  they  had  done  this  to  himself.  Thus 
he  lifts  the  law  of  growth  into  a  very  gospel  of 
growth. 

His  teaching  is  confirmed  by  the  experiences  of 
even  the  life  that  now  is.  In  the  conduct  of  life 
we  are  all  tempted  to  despise  the  small  crosses  he 
sends  us,  the  small  openings  for  kindness  and 
self-sacrifice  the  day  brings  us,  and  the  petty  duties 
and  burdens  which  fill  up  our  humdrum  exist- 
ence. When  we  meet  these  faithfully  and  nobly, 
we  have  our  reward  on  a  grander  scale  than  we 
could  have  expected.  Burdens  grow  to  wings, 
crosses  to  crowns,  faithful  endurance  to  triumph ; 
and  from  each  discharge  of  duty  we  acquire  the 
power  to  meet  the  next  with  efficiency.  ''We  see 
dimly  in  the  present  what  is  small  and  what  is 
great,"  as  Lowell  says.  We  are  blinded  by  the 
illusions  of  life,  and  take  the  great  for  the  small, 
because  it  is  not  the  big.  Our  small  victories  in 
the  face  of  temptation  are  won  over  obstacles  and 
spiritual  enemies  of  the  highest  rank,  and  are 
won  to  the  shaping  of  our  characters,  the 
strengthening  of  our  wills,  the  purification  of  our 


100         NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

vision,  and  the  increase  of  our  faith  and  joy. 
Prof.  Wilham  James  suggests  that  to  do  each  day 
of  Hfe  some  one  thing  we  know  we  ought  to  do, 
but  do  not  want  to  do,  would  have  the  result  of 
making  us  wiser  and  braver  men,  and  more  fit  for 
great  things  if  these  fell  to  our  share. 

On  the  New  Testament  side  of  the  parable,  it 
is  the  joy  of  those  who  work  for  others  to  have  a 
present  experience  of  this  law  of  increase.  We 
who  teach  have  it  in  a  lower  sphere.  Our  ^*boys" 
come  back  to  us  in  their  manhood  and  say,  "I 
never  forgot  what  you  said  to  us  one  day,"  and 
go  on  to  quote  something  which  has  escaped  our 
memories  completely.  Every  day  of  earnest  and 
honest  work  in  the  schoolroom  or  the  college  class 
reaches  some  with  a  touch  which  helps  to  shape 
lives  in  the  years  of  their  plasticity.  There  is, 
however,  one  teacher  who  far  surpasses  us  in 
this.  It  is  she  who  has  the  first  word  with  her 
child,  before  any  other  can  reach  him,  and  who  is 
molding  him  in  ways  which  neither  she  nor  the 
child  can  see.  It  will  take  heaven  to  show  what 
the  work  of  Christian  mothers  has  been  in  build- 
ing up  the  kingdom,  and  it  will  be  a  joyful  sur- 
prise to  many  a  mother,  perhaps  to  all  of  them. 

The  minister  of  the  word  already  shares  in  the 
joy  of  his  Lord,  which  is  depicted  in  the  fifteenth 
chapter  of  Luke's  Gospel,  in  the  parables  of  the 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  loi 

lost  sheep,  the  lost  coin,  the  lost  son.  As  is  there 
said,  it  is  the  joy  which  lights  up  heaven  with  a 
new  gladness,  because  a  sinner  has  turned  to  God. 
The  effort  the  preacher  puts  forth  is  trifling  in 
comparison  with  the  vastness  of  the  result  which 
is  achieved.  As  our  Lord  told  his  apostles,  he  is 
but  reaping  where  others  have  sown  in  most 
cases.  The  best  environment  of  the  man's  life 
has  been  working  toward  grace.  As  George  Her- 
bert says : — 

Lord,  with  what  care  hast  thou  begirt  us  round! 

Parents  first  season  us :    then  schoolmasters 
Deliver  us  to  laws ;    they  send  us  bound 

To  rules  of  reason,  holy  messengers, 

Pulpits  and  Sundays,  sorrow  dogging  sin, 
Afflictions  sorted,  anguish  of  all  sizes, 

Fine  nets  and  stratagems  to  catch  us  in. 
Bibles  laid  open,  millions  of  surprises, 

Blessings  beforehand,  ties  of  gratefulness, 
The  sound  of  glory  ringing  in  our  ears ; 

Without,  our  shame;    within,  our  consciences; 
Angels  and  grace,  eternal  hopes  and  fears. 

All  these  have  entered  into  the  plan  of  the 
man's  life,  who  at  last  is  brought  by  the  preached 
word  to  submit  his  will  to  God.  And  with  all 
these  has  been  the  divine  Sower,  whose  work 
underlies  every  good  influence  which  touches  any 
human  life,  whether  effectually  or  not.     Yet  the 


IQ2         NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

reaper,  who  gathers  the  harvest,  is  not  the  less 
blessed.  "He  that  reapeth  receiveth  wages,"  the 
Lord  tells  his  apostles,  "and  gathereth  fruit  unto 
life  eternal;  that  he  that  soweth  and  he  that 
reapeth  may  rejoice  together."  In  his  very  first 
epistle  the  greatest  of  apostolic  reapers  tells  how 
he  thus  rejoiced  with  his  Lord.  Paul  writes  to 
his  Thessalonian  converts :  "For  what  is  our  hope, 
or  joy,  or  crown  of  glorying?  Are  not  even  ye, 
before  our  Lord  Jesus  at  his  coming  ?  For  ye  are 
our  glory  and  our  joy." 

IV.  Harvest  is  naturally  and  everywhere  a 
time  of  rejoicing.  The  risks  of  tillage  being  be- 
yond man's  wisdom  or  strength  to  cope  with, 
when  these  perils  are  past,  men's  hearts  grow 
lighter.  The  Hebrew  Feast  of  Tabernacles  was 
their  harvest  festival,  and  the  spirit  which  ani- 
mated it  finds  fit  expression  in  the  Eighty-first 
Psalm.  When  Isaiah  would  describe  the  deep 
and  hearty  joy  of  the  reign  of  the  Prince  of 
Peace,  he  says  : — 

They  joy  before  thee  according  to  the  joy  of  the  harvest. 
And  as  men  rejoice  when  they  divide  the  spoil, 

binding  together  two  of  the  situations  in  which 
social  joy  overflows  into  festivity. 

Who  that  was  brought  up  on  an  old-fashioned 
farm,  will  ever  forget  the  harvest-home?     The 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  103 

last  handful  of  wheat  was  cut  with  care,  bound 
with  bright  ribbons,  and  carried  home  by  the 
reaper  to  grace  the  fireplace  in  the  farm-kitchen. 
Then  came  the  feast,  at  which  master  and  men, 
with  their  households,  ate  at  one  huge  table. 
After  hunger  and  thirst  were  satisfied,  there  were 
cheerful  talk  of  the  season  just  passed,  merry 
jesting  about  its  incidents,  singing  of  old  ballads, 
and  games  for  the  younger  folk.  Honest  joy  and 
mirth  drew  all  together,  and  if  any  were  kept  away 
by  sickness,  their  share  was  sent  them.  When- 
ever I  read  that  verse  in  the  ninth  chapter  of 
Isaiah,  it  takes  me  back  to  the  Ulster  farm  of  my 
boyhood,  and  calls  up  the  kind  faces  and  warm 
hearts  which  gathered  at  its  harvest-home.* 

The  spiritual  life,  like  the  life  of  the  farm,  is 
one  which  reaches  its  joys  through  its  toils  and 
even  its  anxieties.  It  is  a  steady  transition  from 
the  sadder  to  the  brighter  side  of  things.  **The 
evening  and  the  morning  were  the  first  day ;"  and 
the  shadows  of  the  one  passing  into  the  bright- 
ness of  the  other  have  been  present  in  every  spir- 
itual day  since  the  first.     As  Lord  Bacon  says, 

*  Harvest-home  is  still  kept  in  many  parts  of  America, 
notably  in  New  Jersey,  where  the  farmers  of  a  neighbor- 
hood unite  in  a  common  celebration.  The  grounds  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  of  Dayton,  N.  J.,  have  been  thus  used 
for  years  past. 


I04  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

adversity  is  among  the  very  promises  of  the  New 
Testament.  It  tells  us  of  tribulations  in  the  world 
to  be  endured;  of  chastenings  which  seal  us  as 
the  sons  of  God;  of  reproaches  for  the  name  of 
Christ ;  of  sharing  in  his  sufferings ;  of  daily  bear- 
ing of  our  cross.  Our  Lord  allowed  his  disciples 
to  cherish  no  delusions  on  this  point,  declaring 
that  he  sent  them  forth  "as  sheep  in  the  midst  of 
wolves,"  and  warning  them  to  expect  at  men's 
hands  no  better  treatment  than  he  himself  re- 
ceived. 

It  is  part  of  that  intimate  communion  which 
Christians  have  with  their  Lord,  that  they  should 
suffer  in  the  presence  of  sin  and  shame  as  he  did. 
We  must  taste  of  the  bitter  of  his  cup,  as  well  as 
of  the  sweet,  and  learn  why  he  was  "a  man  of 
sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief."  The  sight 
of  the  world's  evil  was  a  burden  to  him  at  all 
times;  the  vision  of  its  shamefulness  pierced  his 
heart.  They  who  are  his  desire  to  share  his 
estimate  of  human  life,  and  to  "know  the  fellow- 
ship of  his  sufferings."  Paul  went  farther  than 
we  can  see  our  way,  when  he  spoke  of  "filling  up 
that  which  is  lacking  of  the  afflictions  of  Christ." 
The  saying  indicates  the  closeness  of  his  sym- 
pathy with  his  Master. 

This  is  one  side  of  the  Christian's  experience, 
but  the  Scriptures  always  conjoin  with  it  the  joy 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  105 

of  the  harvest.  "Blessed  are  ye  that  weep  now : 
for  ye  shall  laugh."  "Blessed  are  they  that 
mourn :  for  they  shall  be  comforted."  "Ye  shall 
be  sorrowful,  but  your  sorrow  shall  be  turned 
into  joy."  These  two  notes,  in  this  order,  always 
run  through  the  New  Testament,  as  describing 
the  blessedness  of  the  saints.  It  is  in  exact  har- 
mony with  them  that  the  Christian's  last  expe- 
rience in  this  world  should  be  emergence  through 
the  shadow  of  death  into  the  light  of  the  life 
eternal. 

The  same  alteration  from  sorrow  to  joy  runs 
through  the  life  given  to  the  service  of  men.  Our 
Lord  went  before  his  disciples  in  this  experience 
also.  He  knew  what  it  was  to  toil  in  vain  for  the 
spiritual  elevation  of  those  who  heard  him.  He 
mourned  over  the  blindness  of  the  cities  by  the 
Galilaean  lake,  which  saw  his  mighty  works,  but 
did  not  repent.  He  went  over  Jerusalem,  saying, 
"If  thou  hadst  known  in  this  day,  even  thou,  the 
things  which  belong  unto  peace!  but  now  they 
are  hid  from  thine  eyes."  To  his  countrymen  at 
large  he  said :  "Ye  will  not  come  to  me  that  ye 
may  have  life."  "Few  there  be  that  find"  the 
way  to  life. 

The  success  of  our  Lord's  ministry,  if  meas- 
ured by  the  number  of  the  disciples  he  made,  was 
far  from  remarkable.     At  the  end  of  three  years 


io6  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

he  had  but  a  handful,  and  not  one  of  them  stood 
by  him  in  the  dark  hour.  So  has  it  been  with 
many  of  his  most  spiritual  servants.  Henry 
Martyn  toiled  to  small  result  among  the  Persians ; 
Keith-Falconer  sowed  the  good  seed  on  stony 
ground  among  the  Arabs ;  James  Gilmour  labored 
for  a  lifetime  among  the  Mongols  without  a  con- 
vert to  show.  Even  those  who  have  had  marked 
success  have  had  to  endure  the  heartache  of  pro- 
longed failure  before  it  came,  as  Robert  Moffatt 
did  among  the  Bechuanas,  feeling  **as  if  he  were 
trying  to  lift  a  mirror  by  taking  hold  of  its  face." 
Where  the  sowing  has  been  without  the  har- 
vest during  the  life  of  the  laborer,  it  yet  may  have 
a  brighter  and  better  result  for  the  world  in  the 
long  run.  Dr.  W.  Robertson  Niccoll  suggests  that 
there  is  a  prophecy  of  the  final  success  of  mis- 
sions, which  have  seemed  to  fail,  in  the  words  of 
the  Twenty-second  Psalm : — 

All  the  ends  of  the  earth  shall  remember  and  turn  unto 

Jehovah ; 
And  all  the  kindreds  of  the  nations  shall  worship  before 

thee. 

The  seed  fell  into  the  ground  and  seemed  to  die — 
in  a  sense  did  die — ^but  it  brought  forth  much 
fruit. 

So,  as  our  Lord  predicted,  it  proved  true  of  his 


SOWING  AND  REAPING  107 

own  work.  He  gave  the  world  the  best  that  could 
be  given  it,  and  it  gave  him  the  cross.  Men 
wrote  ''Failure!"  on  that  sealed  tomb,  and  turned 
lightly  to  their  affairs  of  ritual  piety,  or  money- 
making,  or  politics.  But  he  who  had  said,  "Give, 
and  it  shall  be  given  unto  you;  good  measure, 
pressed  down,  shaken  together,  running  over, 
shall  they  give  into  your  bosom,"  was  not  to 
receive  less  than  he  promised  to  those  who  heard 
him.  The  grandest  powers  of  mankind  have  been 
used  in  his  service — the  eloquence  of  the  orator, 
the  speech-mastery  of  the  poet,  the  meditation  of 
the  philosopher,  the  artistic  skill  of  painter  and 
sculptor  and  architect,  the  statesmanship  of  the 
ruler.  All  these  are  but  the  summit-peaks  of  a 
land  ruled  by  his  memory.  Millions  and  hun- 
dreds of  millions  have  lived  for  him,  repressing 
the  evil  passions  and  brute  instincts  of  their  na- 
ture, laying  aside  their  violent  tempers,  purging 
themselves  of  their  impurity,  rising  above  their 
covetousness,  and  toiling  in  honest  ways  for  them- 
selves and  others.  They  have  cut  off  the  right 
hand  and  plucked  out  the  right  eye  at  his  bidding, 
and  carried  their  daily  cross  that  they  might  fol- 
low him.  Myriads  have  died  for  him,  and  in  no 
century  so  many  as  in  that  whose  close  we  have 
witnessed.  More  love  him  to-day  than  yester- 
day,  and   more  will   love  him   to-morrow  than 


io8  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

to-day.  His  influence,  unlike  that  of  other  great 
men,  at  once  deepens  and  widens  with  every  year 
since  his  death,  showing  it  not  to  be  subject  to 
that  law  of  limitation  which  binds  all  finite  things. 
Of  him  especially  may  we  say : — 

"They  that  sow  in  tears  shall  reap  in  joy. 
He  that  goeth  forth  weeping,  bearing  seed  for  sowing, 
Shall  doubtless  come  again  with  joy,  bringing  his  sheaves." 


VII 
UPWARD 


CHAPTER  VII 

UPWARD 

Man's  erect  attitude  is  the  mark  of  his  dignity 
as  the  highest  form  of  life  on  our  planet.  The 
lower  vertebrates  have  their  spines  either  parallel 
with  the  surface  of  the  earth,  or  forming  an  acute 
angle  with  it.  Man  alone  stands  at  right  angles 
with  its  plane,  as  though  to  intimate  that  he  alone 
must  rise  above  it  to  live  his  true  life.  His  is  the 
attitude  of  aspiration. 

In  the  human  body  the  higher  organs  lie  in  the 
upper  part  of  its  structure.  Normally  we  are 
more  alive,  sensitively,  intellectually,  and  morally, 
in  that  quarter.  It  is  only  in  an  abnormal  con- 
dition that  our  vital  activity  finds  any  lower 
center  than  the  head  and  the  heart.  It  is  a  de- 
cline toward  the  mere  animal. 

The  law  of  gravitation  makes  it  hard  to  rise 
and  easy  to  sink.  It  is  proverbially  easy  to  "fall 
off  a  log."  That  in  us  which  seeks  to  be  master 
of  circumstances,  to  overcome  difficulties,  and  to 
assert  our  dignity  as  men,  relishes  a  climb,  just 
because  it  demands  effort  and  persistence.  The 
Alpine  clubs,  which  attack  every  unsealed  height 

III 


112  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

and  are  turning  to  the  Caucasus  and  the  Hima- 
layas after  exhausting  Switzerland,  represent  a 
profound  instinct  in  our  human  nature.  Their 
achievement  in  itself  has  small  value,  but  the 
achieving  brings  exhilaration.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  fall  which  passes  the  bounds  of  our  con- 
trol is  a  most  unwelcome  experience.  Whoever 
has  taken  a  great  and  involuntary  plunge  will 
never  forget  the  horror  of  it,  and  probably 
will  recall  it  as  a  nightmare  in  his  sleep  for 
years. 

For  these  reasons,  and  perhaps  others  besides, 
the  human  race  has  come  to  treat  motion  upward 
and  downward  as  symbols  of  moral  advance  or 
retrogression.  Uprightness  itself,  apart  from 
movement,  it  accepts  as  symbolic  of  manly  in- 
tegrity, while  it  describes  the  vile  things  of  life  as 
low,  base,  despicable;  that  is,  fit  to  be  looked 
down  upon.  And  as  forms  of  faith  in  the  un- 
seen seek  there  what  is  morally  superior,  man 
looks  up  for  his  gods,  and  not  downward,  the 
only  exceptions  being  those  which  reign  in  the 
regions  of  the  dead,  as  Pluto  among  the  Greeks, 
the  dei  inferni  of  the  Romans,  and  the  heli  of  the 
Norse  mythology. 

These  analogies  have  entered  so  deeply  into 
our  thought  and  speech  that  even  when  we  come 
to   recognize   that   upward   and   downward   are 


UPWARD  113 

purely  relative  terms,  and  that  what  is  upward  to 
us  is  downward  to  our  kindred  in  Australia,  we 
continue  to  think  and  speak  in  the  old  groove,  and 
to  talk  of  heaven  as  above  us,  and  of  hell  as  be- 
neath us,  as  did  the  Roman  poet : — 

"Facilis  descensus  Averni, 
Sed   revocare  gradum,  superasque  evadere  ad  auras, 
Hoc  opus,  hie  labor  est." 

This  form  of  thought  had  much  to  do  with  the 
shaping  of  the  religions  of  the  world.  At  every 
point  in  their  history  we  find  men  looking  upward 
for  an  object  of  worship,  but  looking  higher  and 
yet  higher  as  they  toil  after  the  unseen.  These 
religions,  indeed,  may  be  defined  as  man's  efforts 
to  climb  upward  to  God,  while  the  gospel  is  the 
stooping  of  God  to  man. 

I.  A  very  early  form  of  paganism  looks  up  to 
and  worships  the  tree.  This  is  connected  with 
the  fact  that  the  tree  was  the  first  home  of  man, 
throughout  a  large  part  of  the  world.  Mr. 
Landor  found  tree-dwellers  in  the  Philippines. 
The  ordinary  type  of  house  in  Burmah,  and  most 
of  the  islands  southeast  of  Asi?.,  is  evidently  a 
modification  of  that  which  was  built  in  the 
branches  of  a  tree,  on  a  platform  above  the  reach 
of  wild  beasts  and  wilder  men.  In  the  west  we 
find  that  houses  planted  on  the  solid  earth  were. 


114         NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

in  many  instances,  built  around  a  tree.  It  was 
thus  with  the  home  of  Ulysses  in  Ithaca.  In  the 
Volsunga  Saga,  the  royal  hall  of  the  Volsung 
king  is  built  around  a  great  tree,  into  whose  trunk 
Odin  drives  the  sword,  which  is  to  be  the  property 
of  the  hero  who  can  'draw  it  out.  This  shows  that 
even  in  the  north  the  tree  may  have  been  the  first 
home. 

The  tree  thus  inhabited  was  a  sacred  thing, 
and  an  object  of  worship  as  the  protector  of  the 
home  and  its  occupants.  In  some  cases  it  fed  and 
clothed  them.  It  retained  its  sacred  character, 
and  was  looked  up  to  as  something  divine,  even 
after  the  house  had  come  to  earth  for  its  founda- 
tion. Two  forms  of  this  tree  cult  are  found  in 
the  idolatry  which  the  Hebrew  people  sometimes 
adopted  from  their  neighbors.  The  "ashera"  or 
"grove"  was  a  row  of  wooden  pillars  (trees  with 
the  roots  cut  off,  but  their  branches  probably  re- 
tained) which  were  planted  beside  the  altars  of 
the  moon-goddess  Astarte,  "the  Queen  of  heaven." 
Besides  this,  as  the  prophets  tell  us,  they  wor- 
shiped false  gods  "under  every  green  tree."  The 
sacred  oak  grove  of  Dordona  is  the  monument  of 
a  similar  worship  in  early  Greece.  Caesar  says 
that  in  his  days  the  Germans  had  no  temples,  but 
worshiped  their  gods  in  sacred  groves,  and  offered 
human  sacrifices  by  hanging  men  on  the  trees  of 


UPWARD  IIS 

the  grove.  Sacred  trees  played  a  great  part  in 
the  Druidic  worship  of  the  British  Islands,  and 
survivals  of  this  are  found  in  sacred  oaks  and 
thorns,  now  under  the  protection  of  the  fairies, 
who  are  said  to  send  disaster  upon  any  one  who 
cuts  down  one  of  these  trees. 

II.  The  tree  might  perish  by  the  lightning 
stroke,  or  by  natural  decay,  and  the  heart  craves 
an  imperishable  deity.  The  next  objects  of  man's 
reverence  were  the  "everlasting  hills,"  as  the 
loftiest  and  most  unchanging  features  of  the 
earth's  surface.  On  their  summits  there  reigned 
a  peace  and  a  silence  which  awed  those  who 
climbed  them.  There  the  air  blew  free  and  pure. 
They  lifted  up  their  protecting  bulks  between  the 
valleys  and  the  storms.  They  were  the  most 
ancient  landmarks,  which  sundered  tribe  from 
tribe,  and  kept  the  peace  between  them.  To  the 
wanderer,  they  pointed  out  the  location  of  his 
home,  and  they  reminded  him  of  the  days  of  his 
childhood,  when  they  had  seemed  an  appendage 
to  his  father's  house.  Fusi-yama  is  thus  invested 
with  an  especial  sanctity  in  the  eyes  of  the  Jap- 
anese. It  is  reproduced  in  every  garden,  and 
introduced  into  every  landscape.  One  of  my 
Japanese  students  told  me  he  could  not  restrain  his 
tears  when  it  came  into  sight,  as  he  was  return- 
ing for  the  first  time  from  America. 


ii6  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Nor  was  this  sacredness  of  the  mountains  ob- 
literated when  the  conception  of  the  gods  as  per- 
sonal beings,  existing  in  human  form,  displaced 
the  early  worship  of  natural  facts  and  forces.  In 
the  summits  of  the  mountains  the  gods  made  their 
home.  Olympus,  in  Thessaly,  close  by  the  scene 
of  the  first  union  of  the  Hellenic  tribes  for  a  com- 
mon defense,  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  home 
of  Zeus  and  the  other  deities  of  Greek  worship. 
In  the  mountain  gorge  at  Delphi  was  the  shrine 
where  Apollo  gave  out  the  oracles,  which  directed 
the  whole  movement  of  the  Greek  people,  until 
the  self-seeking  of  its  priests  undermined  confi- 
dence in  its  utterances. 

III.  Higher  still  were  the  visible  heavens,  and 
the  heavenly  host — sun,  moon,  and  stars.  The 
worship  of  the  sky  itself  had  begun  before  the 
Aryan  race  broke  up  into  its  Asiatic  and  Euro- 
pean branches.  Dyaus-piter,  Zeus-pater,  Jupiter, 
in  Sanscrit,  Greek,  and  Latin,  mean  "Father- 
heaven;"  and  while  the  first  holds  a  very  subor- 
dinate place  in  the  Indian  Vedas,  the  second  and 
third  stand  at  the  head  of  the  deities  of  the  west. 
The  worship  of  heaven  is  one  of  the  most  solemn 
functions  of  the  Emperor  of  China,  whose  highest 
title  is  "Son  of  Heaven."  The  calm  and  the 
purity  of  the  firmament,  its  wondrous  shapes  of 
beauty  and  tints  of  color,  its  peace  under  most 


UPWARD  117 

conditions,  and  its  scope  as  embracing  all  things, 
suggested  divine  honors  for  it. 

The  Semitic  race,  however,  was  drawn  more 
to  the  worship  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  Their  ex- 
istence in  the  silence  of  the  great  celestial  spaces, 
the  grand  order  of  their  movements,  their  benefi- 
cence as  givers  of  light  and  heat,  their  control  of 
the  succession  of  the  seasons,  their  freedom  from 
decay,  and  the  belief  that  their  conjunction  fore- 
tokened, if  it  did  not  procure,  the  fates  of  those 
who  were  born  at  that  instant,  all  seemed  to 
identify  them  with  the  Intelligence  which  con- 
trols the  affairs  of  men.  Tradition  fixes  upon  the 
open  plains  of  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris  Valley 
as  the  earliest  home  of  astronomy  and  astrology ; 
and  the  worship  of  the  host  of  heaven  would  be  a 
natural  resort  for  those  who  had  no  mountain  to 
look  up  to,  especially  if  they  had  been  removed  by 
a  sudden  and  forced  emigration  from  their  homes 
in  the  upland  country,  and  from  their  ancient 
sanctuaries  of  tree  and  hill. 

The  Semitic  mind,  however,  demands  a  per- 
sonal god  as  the  object  of  its  worship,  and  through 
this  demand  we  find  Baal  (or  Moloch)  the  sun 
god,  Astarte  (or  Ishtar)  the  moon  god,  and 
Chiun  (Amos  v:26)  the  Saturn  god,  standing 
out  as  distinctly  marked  personalities,  without 
any  loss  of  their  position  in  the  sky.    These  gods, 


ii8  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

made  in  the  image  of  man,  shared  in  his  baser  as 
well  as  his  better  instincts,  and  the  latter  were  sub- 
ordinated to  the  former.  Their  worship  became 
an  orgy  such  as  Elijah  witnessed  on  Mount  Car- 
mel,  or  an  indulgence  of  sensual  passions,  or  a 
sacrifice  of  human  beings  to  propitiate  their  favor. 
Sabaism,  or  the  worship  of  the  host  (Tsabaoth) 
of  heaven,  is  the  Semitic  form  of  paganism, 
traceable  from  Uz  in  the  south  to  Syria 
in  the  north,  and  from  Assyria  in  the  east  to 
Carthage  and  Cadiz  in  the  west.  It  was  there- 
fore the  form  of  idolatry  to  which  the  Hebrews 
were  especially  tempted,  both  because  of  their 
mental  affinity  with  those  peoples,  and  through 
their  proximity  to  the  religious  centers  where 
this  worship  was  practiced. 

Their  first  contact  with  Sabaism  occurred 
toward  the  close  of  their  wanderings  in  the  wilder- 
ness, when  the  Moabites  and  Midianites,  appar- 
ently at  the  suggestion  Balaam,  enticed  them 
to  join  in  the  worship  of  Baal-peor,  through  the 
unchaste  orgies  which  characterized  Semitic 
Sabaism.  From  this  time  to  the  captivity  of 
Jerusalem  by  Nebuchadrezzar,  a  period  of  a 
thousand  years  (with  the  exception  of  the  two 
centuries  between  Samuel  and  Ahab),  we  find  this 
vile  and  cruel  form  of  idolatry  appearing  and  re- 
appearing among  the  Hebrews.     It  won  a  great 


UPWARD  119 

victory  through  the  marriage  of  Ahab  with  Jeze- 
bel, but  reached  its  height  during  the  apostasy  of 
King  Manasseh,  Avhen  altars  to  Baal  and  Ashta- 
roth  stood  in  the  very  courts  of  the  temple,  and 
the  Valley  Hinnom  was  profaned  by  human 
sacrifices.  Jeremiah,  its  greatest  enemy  after 
Elijah,  scourges  it  in  his  prophecies,  declaring 
there  were  as  many  altars  for  it  as  there  were 
streets  in  Jerusalem,  and  that  the  people  had  for- 
gotten the  name  of  God  even  in  their  oaths,  and 
substituted  that  of  Baal.  Stephen  reminds  the 
Jews  of  this  as  the  sink  of  idolatrous  iniquity  into 
which  their  fathers  had  sunk,  quoting  the  prophet 
Amos.  Yet  Mosaic  worship  survived  it,  and  it 
disappeared  after  the  Exile.  As  Andrew  Lang 
says,  the  unique  thing  in  Hebrew  history  is 
that  the  people  encountered  every  temptation 
which  had  degraded  primitive  faith  into  super- 
stition in  other  peoples,  and  overcame  these 
through  the  influence  exerted  by  their  inspired 
prophets. 

The  Scriptures  discredit  all  attempts  to  find 
God  through  this  looking  upward  to  natural  ob- 
jects, whether  tree  or  hill  or  sky.  But  just  as 
they  use  freely  the  language  which  treats  upward 
and  downward  as  symbols  of  the  noble  and  the 
vile,  so  they  employ  the  cognate  symbolism  of 
nature  in  speaking  of  divine  relations. 


120         NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

I.  It  is  remarkable  how  prominent  the  tree  is 
in  the  earHest  chapters  of  the  Mosaic  record. 
Whether  the  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil, 
and  the  tree  of  life  in  the  midst  of  Eden,  are  sym- 
bols or  facts,  they  fit  into  the  primitive  mode  of 
thought,  but  to  correct  its  errors.  The  tree  is  not 
put  forward  as  a  sacred  thing  in  itself,  but  as  the 
instrument  by  which  a  divine  Being  higher  than 
itself  deals  with  men. 

Throughout  the  early  history  of  the  elect  peo- 
ple we  hear  nothing,  indeed,  of  tree-worship,  but 
of  the  constant  selection  of  the  tree  as  the  back- 
ground of  home,  and  also  of  sacred  acts.  Abra- 
ham made  his  home  under  the  oaks  of  Mamre, 
the  Amorite,  his  friend  as  well  as  neighbor. 
Jacob  hid  the  teraphim  *'under  the  oak  which  is  in 
Shechem."  The  angel  which  called  Gideon  to 
judge  Israel  "came  and  sat  under  the  oak  which 
was  in  Ophrah,"  and  after  their  interview  "Gid- 
eon built  an  altar  there  unto  Jehovah,  and  called  it 
Jehovah-shalom."  After  his  death,  and  the  mur- 
der of  all  his  legitimate  sons  but  Jotham,  "the 
men  of  Shechem  .  .  .  made  Abimelech  king,  by 
the  oak  of  the  pillar  that  was  in  Shechem" — the 
same  tree  as  was  standing  "by  the  sanctuary  of 
Jehovah"  in  Shechem,  when  Joshua  set  up  under  it 
a  great  stone  as  a  witness  against  all  who  de- 
parted from  the  words  of  God's  law. 


UPWARD  121 

II.  The  prominence  of  the  mountains  and  hills 
in  the  Bible  cannot  escape  any  attentive  reader. 
The  story,  from  Sinai  to  Olivet,  from  the  giving 
of  the  law  to  the  Ascension,  may  be  said  to  run 
over  the  mountains  of  Palestine,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  seventy  weary  years  of  the  Captivity 
on  the  mud-flats  of  the  Tigris  Valley.  The  last 
book  of  the  Canon  is  placed  on  the  island  of  Pat- 
mos,  one  of  a  group  of  mountains  half  sunk  in  the 
^gean  Sea;  and  for  its  last  vision  the  apostle  is 
carried  "in  the  Spirit  to  a  mountain  great  and 
high,"  that  he  may  behold  the  holy  city. 

It  seems  to  have  been  the  divine  purpose  to  take 
the  mountains  as  the  fitting  background  for  the 
great  scenes  of  sacred  history.  On  Sinai  (or 
Horeb),  which  rises  about  seven  thousand  three 
hundred  and  seventy-five  feet  above  the  Red  Sea, 
the  law  was  given ;  Elijah  received  the  impressive 
lesson  that  divine  power  differs  in  kind  from 
physical  force;  and  Paul  studied  out  the  prob- 
lems of  law  and  gospel  (Galatians  i:  17;  iv:25). 
From  Mounts  Gerizim  and  Ebal,  after  the  con- 
quest, the  blessings  and  the  curses  of  the  law  were 
proclaimed  to  the  Hebrew  people.  The  taber- 
nacle was  set  up  by  Joshua  at  Shiloh,  on  a  hill 
which  rises  two  thousand  three  hundred  and 
thirty  feet  above  the  surrounding  plain. 
After  the  capture  of  the  ark  by  the  Philistines, 


122         NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

the  tabernacle  seems  to  have  been  removed  to 
Nob,  a  city  of  the  priests,  which  overlooked 
Jerusalem  (Isaiah  x:32)  from  the  north.  This 
was  superseded  when  David  brought  the  ark 
from  Kiriath-jearim  to  Jerusalem,  and  Solomon 
built  the  temple  on  Mount  Moriah,  about  two 
thousand  five  hundred  and  fifty  feet  above 
the  sea  level.  Moriah  and  Zion  were  the 
twin  mountains  of  the  Holy  City,  the  latter  the 
home  of  the  house  of  David,  while  the  former 
was  the  place  of  the  divine  presence.  They 
might  be  said  to  stand  for  church  and  state,  and 
much  is  missed  by  a  popular  confusion  of  Mount 
Zion  with  the  site  of  the  temple. 

The  site  of  Jerusalem  as  a  sanctuary  among  the 
hills  and  built  upon  the  hills,  was  especially  dear 
to  the  devout  Hebrews.  They  were  under  no 
delusion  as  to  its  relative  height.  The  difficult 
Sixty-eighth  Psalm  contrasts  Jerusalem  with  the 
loftier  heights  of  Hermon  and  Bashan,  and  says : 

Why  look  ye  askance,  ye  high  mountains. 

At  the  mountain  which  God  hath  desired  for  his  abode? 

In  their  eyes  it  was  "the  mountain  of  the 
Lord;"  "the  mountain  of  the  Lord's  house;"  "the 
holy  hill"  of  Jehovah,  where  they  were  called 
to  worship  his  holiness,  and  a  symbol  of  his  pro- 
tection of  his  people : — 


UPWARD  123 

I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  mountains: 
From  whence  shall  my  help  come? 
My  help  cometh  from  Jehovah, 
Who  made  heaven  and  earth. 

They  that  trust  in  Jehovah  are  as  mount  Zion, 
Which  cannot  be  moved,  but  abideth  for  ever. 
As  the  mountains  are  round  about  Jerusalem, 
So  Jehovah  is  round  about  his  people. 

It  is  a  recent  discovery  of  the  Egyptian  Ex- 
ploration Society  that  the  Tel-el- Yehudiyeh,  or 
"Mound  of  the  Jews,"  in  Egypt,  is  the  ruin  of  the 
Jewish  temple  erected  by  Onias,  son  of  the  high 
priest  Onias  III.,  about  160  B.  C,  with  permission 
of  King  Ptolemy  VI. ;  and  that  it  was  mounted  on 
an  artificial  hill,  raised  by  human  labor  some 
sixty-eight  feet  above  the  flat  land  of  the  delta, 
and  secured  by  a  wall  of  brick  some  twenty  feet 
thick.  It  reproduced  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  on 
a  scale  of  one  half  the  size.  The  Jews  in  Egypt 
seem  to  have  felt  that  it  would  be  no  house  of 
God,  unless  they  could  say,  "Let  us  go  up  to  it." 

In  the  New  Testament,  there  is  the  same  choice 
of  the  mountains  as  the  fitting  scene  of  gi'eat 
events.  Our  Lord  preaches  the  great  Sermon  of 
the  Foundations  on  a  mountain  side,  coming 
down  to  meet  the  multitude,  which  came  up  to 
hear  him.  In  that,  he  compares  his  church  to  a 
city  set  on  a  hill,  which  cannot  be  hid,  just  as 


124  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Jerusalem  was.  He  was  transfigured  before  the 
three  disciples  on  an  unnamed  mountain,  meeting 
the  great  representatives  of  law  and  prophecy, 
whose  story  is  bound  up  with  the  mountains. 
When  he  spent  the  night  in  prayer  to  his  Father, 
he  "went  out  into  the  mountain"  for  that  purpose, 
and  when  he  was  crucified  it  was  on  Mount 
Calvary,  the 

....  green  hill  far  away 
Without  the   city  wall, 

of  Mrs.  Alexander's  hymn.  After  the  Resurrec- 
tion, "the  eleven  disciples  went  into  Galilee,  unto 
the  mountain  where  Jesus  had  appointed  them," 
and  met  him  there.  "From  the  mount  called 
Olivet,  which  is  nigh  unto  Jerusalem,"  he  as- 
cended to  his  Father,  and  passed  from  the  region 
of  sense  to  that  of  faith. 

Yet  while  our  Lord  made  use  of  the  mountains 
as  the  fitting  scene  of  great  transactions,  and  em- 
ploys the  associations  which  they  offer,  he  warns 
us  that  this  is  relative  and  even  temporary.  The 
woman  of  Samaria,  who  stood  in  sight  of  Mount 
Gerizim  and  was  jealous  for  its  honor,  said,  "Our 
fathers  worshiped  in  this  mountain;  and  ye  say, 
that  [on  Mount  Moriah]  in  Jerusalem  is  the  place 
where  men  ought  to  worship."  Jesus  answered, 
"Believe  me,  the  hour  cometh,  when  neither  in  this 


UPWARD  125 

mountain,  nor  in  Jerusalem,  shall  ye  worship  the 
Father  .  .  .  The  hour  cometh,  and  now  is,  when 
the  true  worshiper  shall  worship  the  Father  [who 
is  a  Spirit],  in  spirit  and  truth."  This  was  the 
great  proclamation  of  the  spirituality  of  the  pres- 
ence and  service  of  God.  Local  associations  and 
backgrounds  have  their  use,  but  they  are  not  final- 
ities, and  shall  cease  when  men  get  beyond  the 
need  of  them. 

III.  Sometimes  the  Scriptures  seem  to  speak  of 
the  visible  heavens  as  the  home  of  God,  but 
always  with  rejection  of  the  notion  that  they  are 
worthy  of  our  worship.  Especially,  they  put  him 
forward  as  the  creator  of  heaven  and  of  earth,  in 
a  way  unknown  to  any  other  ancient  literature, 
and  subordinate  the  heavenly  bodies  to  him  as 
their  maker  and  master.  He  is  Jehovah  of  hosts, 
never  one  of  that  host.  He  has  given  to  sun  and 
moon  their  place  in  the  heavens,  and  they  are  the 
witnesses  of  his  greatness  and  his  wisdom.  His 
throne  is  in  the  heavens,  and  from  heaven  looks 
down  upon  the  children  of  men.  By  this  local- 
ization, men  are  enabled  more  easily  to  feel  his 
personality,  and  to  recognize  his  rule. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  find  along  with  these 
statements  others  which  correct  their  imperfec- 
tion as  expressions  of  God's  greatness.  *'The 
heaven   of   heavens   cannot   contain   thee,"    says 


126  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Solomon  in  the  prayer  at  the  dedication  of  the 
temple.     The  Psalmist  says: — 

Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  Spirit? 

Or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence? 

If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there : 

If  I  make  my  bed  in  Sheol,  behold,  thou  art  there. 

If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 

And  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea; 

Even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me, 

And  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me. 

The  greatness  of  God  in  comparison  with  the 
littleness  of  the  creature,  as  it  is  stated  in  the 
fortieth  chapter  of  Isaiah,  is  one  of  the  sublimest 
themes  of  Hebrew  poetry,  and  the  heavens  are  ex- 
pressly included  in  the  list  of  the  things  which  are 
dealt  with  after  his  pleasure. 

The  New  Testament  uses  the  same  language, 
for  the  most  part,  as  the  Old  in  this  regard.  Men 
are  forbidden  to  "swear  by  heaven,  for  it  is  God's 
throne."  They  are  bidden  to  pray  to  "Our  Father 
in  the  heavens,"  to  distinguish  him  from  human 
fathers  upon  the  earth.  The  Son  of  man  "came 
down  from  heaven;"  he  "beheld  Satan  fallen  as 
lightning  from  heaven;"  he  will  come  to  judg- 
ment "on  the  clouds  of  heaven  with  power  and 
great  glory;"  he  is  "the  high  priest,  that  hath 
passed  into  the  heavens."  Heaven  and  earth 
shall  pass  away,  to  be  replaced  by  a  new  heaven 


UPWARD  127 

and  a  new  earth.  How  are  we  to  understand 
these  expressions  ?  Not  of  the  visible  sky,  which 
we  know  to  be  a  mere  appearance  of  a  celestial 
roof,  produced  by  the  water  suspended  in  our 
atmosphere.  Many  understand  them  to  mean 
that  there  is,  at  some  distance  not  ascertained,  but 
above  us  and  beyond  the  range  of  our  sight,  a 
place  which  is  the  especial  center  or  focus  of  God's 
presence,  and  to  which  he  will  welcome  his  people 
after  death.  They  believe  that  if  one  left  this 
earth  and  proceeded  for  the  right  distance  and  in 
the  right  direction,  he  would  find  heaven,  just 
as  if  he  went  in  the  direction  of  the  star  Alpha 
Centauri  the  twenty  billions  of  miles  which 
measure  its  distance  from  us,  he  would  reach  that 
star. 

When  this  belief  is  stated  distinctly  it  arouses 
in  us  a  certain  repugnance,  which  is  not  removed 
by  any  qualifications  as  to  the  omnipresence  of 
God.  We  feel  that  we  have  lost  something  by 
putting  heaven  to  an  immense  distance  from  earth, 
and  bringing  all  intercourse  between  them  to  a 
form  of  celestial  telegraphy  at  an  inconceivable 
distance.  Nor  does  it  correspond  to  much  that 
is  said  in  the  New  Testament  about  the  relations 
of  the  two.  We  are  told  by  Peter  that  "the 
heaven  must  receive"  our  Lord  "until  the  times 
of  [the]  restoration  of  all  things ;"  but  the  same 


128  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

apostle  had  heard  our  Lord  say,  "Where  two  or 
three  are  gathered  together  in  my  name,  there  am 
I  in  the  midst  of  them." 

There  is  a  series  of  passages  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment which  seem  to  bring  heaven  near  to  our 
human  hfe,  and  to  exclude  the  idea  of  its  im- 
mense distance  from  us.  At  our  Lord's  bap- 
tism "the  heavens  were  opened  to  him,"  or  "rent 
asunder,"  and  "a  voice  came  out  of  the 
heavens,"  which  was  the  voice  of  the  Father  de- 
claring his  delight  in  his  Son.  We  find  that  the 
same  voice  "out  of  the  bright  cloud"  bore  the 
same  testimony  at  the  Transfiguration;  and  that 
it  came  a  third  time  as  Jesus  taught  in  the  tem- 
ple— "a  voice  out  of  heaven"  to  declare  before 
Gentile  and  Jew  that  the  Father's  will  was  in  per- 
fect accord  with  that  of  the  Son  (John  xii :  27- 
32).  We  learn  that  at  Pentecost  the  "sound  as 
of  the  rushing  of  a  mighty  wind"  came  from 
heaven;  that  Stephen  in  sight  of  the  martyr's 
death  was  permitted  to  see  in  heaven,  and  beheld 
his  Lord  "standing  on  the  right  hand  of  God;" 
and  that  Saul's  conversion  at  the  gates  of 
Damascus  was  through  "a  light  from  heaven, 
above  the  brightness  of  the  sun,"  and  the  voice 
which  won  him  to  obedience  and  commissioned 
him  for  his  work.  And  John  in  Patmos,  after  re- 
ceiving the  messages  to  the  seven  churches,  saw, 


UPWARD  129 

and  beheld  a  door  open  in  heaven,  wherein  a 
throne  was  set,  and  One  sitting  upon  the  throne. 

These  are  the  passages  which  come  the  nearest 
to  disclosing  to  us  the  relation  of  heaven  to  earth, 
and  its  influence  upon  the  lives  of  men.  None  of 
them  suggest  that  our  inability  to  behold  the  con- 
tent of  heaven  is  due  to  its  vast  distance  from  us, 
and  not  to  our  spiritual  imperfection.  They 
seem  to  teach  that  heaven  is  shut  to  us  because  we 
are  not  yet  fit  for  the  vision  of  its  spiritual 
realities,  and  will  be  "opened"  to  us  when  we  at- 
tain to  that  which  the  Master  promised  to 
Nathanael  and  Philip :  "Ye  shall  see  the  heaven 
opened,  and  the  angels  of  God  ascending  and 
descending  upon  the  Son  of  man" — the  true 
Jacob's  ladder,  which  binds  heaven  and  earth. 

An  opposite  error  to  that  which  removes  heaven 
to  an  immense  distance,  is  that  which  makes  it  to 
exist  only  in  the  human  spirit,  as  a  personal  ex- 
perience. This  notion  has  been  very  common 
among  the  Mystics.  Thus  Johann  Scheffler 
writes : — ■ 

How  far  is  it  to  heaven?     Not  very  far,  my  friend; 
A  single  hearty  step  will  all  thy  journey  end. 

Hold  there!  where  runnest  thou?  Know  heaven  is  in  thee; 
Seekest  thou  for  God  elsewhere,  his  face  thou'lt  never  see. 

The  same  view  also  commends  itself  to  ration- 
alists.    "Are  we  still,  like  children,"  says  Orville 


130  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

Dewey,  "fancying  that  heaven  is  a  beautiful  city, 
into  which  one  needs  only  the  powers  of  locomo- 
tion to  enter?  Do  we  not  know  that  heaven  is 
in  the  mind;  in  the  greatness  and  elevation  and 
purity  of  our  immortal  nature?"  Heaven  is  a 
thing  more  real  and  objective  than  is  any  state  of 
the  human  spirit,  and  lies  without  us  as  well  as 
within  us.  So  we  are  taught  by  the  disclosures  of 
the  New  Testament  about  it.  It  was  not  a  state 
of  the  spirit  which  was  opened  to  our  Lord  at  his 
baptism,  or  to  Stephen  in  his  death  hour,  or  to 
Paul  in  his  conversion.  In  the  last  case  especially 
we  see  the  inadequacy  of  this  subjective  notion  of 
heaven.  The  persecutor's  inner  state  was  not  in 
harmony  with  the  light  and  the  voice  from 
heaven,  but  was  to  be  made  such  through  them. 

I  find  the  view  I  have  tried  to  present  in  the 
writing  of  some  of  our  Christian  poets,  while  in 
most  of  our  hymns  the  more  material  conception 
of  a  distant  region  beyond  the  skies  is  dominant. 
Mr.  T.  D.  Bernard  writes : — 

Not  in  some  distant  world  unknown, 

Not  in  the  lofty  skies. 
Not  o'er  the  ocean  vast  and  lone, 

God's  kingdom  lies. 

As  near  its  unseen  presence  comes 

As  air  that  circles  round ; 
Along  our  paths  and  in  our  homes 

Its  voices  sound. 


UPWARD  131 

Mrs.  A.  T.  D.  Whitney  writes  of  the  angels  of 
the  children : — 

The  world  is  troublous,  and  hard  and  cold. 
And  men  and  women  grow  gray  and  old ; 
But  behind  the  world  is  an  inner  place, 
Where  yet  their  angels  behold  God's  face. 

Susan  Coolidge  (Miss  Woolsey)  asks  as  to  the 
soul  leaving  the  body: — 

Does  it  travel  wide?    Does  it  travel  far, 

To  find  the  place  where  all  spirits  are? 

Does  it  measure  long  leagues  from  star  to  star? 

With  a  rapture  of  sudden  consciousness, 
I  think  it  awakes  to  a  knowledge  of  this — 
That  heaven  earth's  closest  neighbor  is. 

That  'tis  but  a  step  from  dark  to  day, 
From  the  worn-out  tent  and  the  burial  clay, 
To  the  rapture  of  youth  renewed  for  aye. 

And  that  just  where  the  soul,  perplexed  and  awed, 
Begins  its  journey,  it  meets  the  Lord, 
And  finds  that  heaven,  and  the  great  reward 
Lay  just  outside  its  prison! 

Samuel     Longfellow     dwells    on     a     natural 
analogy : — 

The  sea  is  but  another  sky, 

The  sky  a  sea  as  well; 
And  which  is  earth,  and  which  the  heavens, 

The  eye  can  scarcely  tell. 


132  NATURE,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

So  when  for  us  life's  evening  hour, 

Soft  passing,  shall  descend, 
May  glory  born  of  earth  and  heaven 

The  earth  and  heavens  blend. 

Flooded  with  peace  the  spirit  float. 

With  silent  rapture  glow, 
Till   where    earth    ends   and   heaven   begins 

The  soul  shall  scarcely  know. 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  feels  the  nearness  of 
heaven  in  her  sense  of  her  nearness  to  those 
who  have  left  her  by  death : — ■ 

It  lies  about  us  like  a  cloud — 

A  world  we  do  not  see; 
Yet  the  sweet  closing  of  an  eye 

May  bring  us  there  to  be. 

Its  gentle  breezes  fan  our  cheek; 

Amid  our  worldly  cares 
Its  gentle  voices  whisper  love 

And  mingle  with  our  prayers. 

Sweet  hearts  around   us   throb  and  beat, 

Sweet  helping  hands  are  stirred. 
And  palpitates  the  veil  between 

With  breathings  almost  heard. 

The  silence,   awful,   sweet,   and  calm. 

They  have  no  power  to  break; 
For  mortal  words  are  not  for  them 

To  utter  or  partake. 

If  the  conception  of  heaven  as  a  part  of  space, 
and  that  of  heaven  as  a  state  of  the  spirit,  be  both 


UPWARD  133 

of  them  inadequate  and  misleading*,  what  is  the 
central  thought  as  to  its  nature  which  will  avoid 
these  faults  ?  It  is  that  of  heaven  as  a  fellowship 
or  society,  which  unites  God  and  his  sinless  or  re- 
deemed creatures.  It  is  our  Father's  house  be- 
cause the  Father  is  there.  It  is  the  Saviour's 
purpose,  *That  where  I  am,  ye  may  be  also," 
which  foretells  its  blessedness  to  his  people. 
Heaven  is  the  full  realization  of  that  "fellowship 
with  the  Father,  and  with  his  Son  Jesus  Christ," 
which  John  sets  forth  as  the  inmost  life  of  the 
church  of  Christ.  It  is  the  central  spiritual  fact 
of  the  whole  spiritual  universe,  which  knows  no 
distance  from  any  man's  spirit  except  that  which 
he  makes  by  sin,  and  which  even  breaks  through 
the  bounds  sin  has  set,  to  seek  and  find  the  lost. 

This  fellowship  we  cannot  but  think  as  in  space, 
that  being  the  "form  of  thought"  into  which  we 
put  all  our  pictures  of  what  is  outside  our  minds. 
Heaven  must  be  something  vague  and  indefinite 
to  us,  unless  we  think  of  it  as  being  as  concrete  and 
placed,  as  was  the  home  we  were  born  into.  Yet 
we  must  guard  against  a  localization,  which  shuts 
God  out  of  immediate  relation  to  all  existences. 
We  call  this  relation  his  omnipresence,  but  the 
word  is  not  a  happy  one,  and  does  not  correspond 
to  scriptural  usage.  Rather  than  conceive  of  God 
as  present  ever3rwhere,  and  thus  diffused  like  a 


134  NATURE,,  THE  MIRROR  OF  GRACE 

vapor  through  all  space,  we  should  think  of  all 
things  as  present  to  him,  Coleridge  says.  Thus 
we  escape  a  tendency  which  may  land  us  in  pan- 
theism. 

Heaven  on  man's  side,  is  the  loyal  and  loving 
realization  of  the  fellowship  to  which  God  invites 
all  his  rational  creatures.  His  will  is  our  peace; 
his  service  our  liberty;  his  presence  our  heaven. 

"Thou  art  the  source  and  center  of  all  minds, 
Their  only  point  of  rest,  Eternal  Word! 
From  thee  departing,  they  are  lost,  and  rove 
At   random,   without   honor,   hope,   or  peace. 
From  thee  is  all  that  soothes  the  life  of  man. 
His  high  endeavor  and  his  glad  success. 
His  strength  to  suffer  and  his  will  to  serve." 


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